The Scarecrow
by nascently
Summary: Lily wins the Felix Felicis in sixth-year Potions. It turns out her perfect day is identical to what Severus's would have been...with a catch. Canon at the beginning, then diverges.
1. Liquid Luck

Lily wins the Felix Felicis in sixth-year Potions. It turns out her perfect day is identical to what Severus's would have been...with a catch. Severus/Lily, I'm going to call this an AU. Covers the years 1976-1981. This is the first of eight parts, approx. 40,000 words for the entire story.

WARNING: This story is very sensual and somewhat angsty and has something of a tragic ending. It also has a lot of adult content, so if you're not into angst and romance and things, please skip.

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><p><strong>PART I: LIQUID LUCK<strong>

They'd both gotten O's in their Potions O.W.L.s, of course. Not many had, or even received an E. Fortunately, Potter and his mates, with the exception of Lupin, didn't manage it, evidently, since they failed to make it to N.E.W.T. level.

Severus was glad of it, just so that he could have at least one class, anyway, where his tormentors were not present. Not that it helped him at all where _she_ was concerned. This year, they did not sit together, as they had in years past. Rather, she partnered up with Lupin, and Severus found himself with no partner at all, since there was an odd number of students in the class, and not even his Slytherin fellows preferred to sit with him.

It was the first time he'd seen her up close since last term. For two long months over the summer he'd only glimpsed her from afar as he hid in one of her neighbor's hedgerows and watched her walk to and from her house with her sister. She no longer met him at the riverbank, when in previous summers he might see her every day for a week straight. The pain of wounded pride was nothing in comparison to heartbreak's agony, a lesson he had learned the hard way.

When school commenced he'd of course seen her at Nine and three quarters, but she was chattering with Mary Macdonald and the other Gryffindors, her back pointedly to him. Across the Great Hall during the welcome feast her back was to him too, her long red hair like a stop sign. So Potions was the first time in what seemed like an age he'd been able to see her face clearly.

In a way, it would have been better if he'd not. To his disbelief, she'd grown even more beautiful over the summer, and more womanly too, her cheeks having lost their girlish roundness and instead taking on an almost feline shape so that his heart thrummed with bitter longing and his fingers itched to caress her face. But she looked at him not at all, merely folded her hands in front of her as Slughorn entered the classroom at last and smiled around at the students. If he had an opinion as to why Severus and Lily were not sitting together as they had in the past, he kept it to himself.

"Welcome, welcome!" Slughorn chirped in his jovial way. "Well, here we are then! Congratulations on reaching N.E.W.T.-level Potions! You have all passed your O.W.L.s with an Exceeds Expectations or better, and therefore are quite ready for advanced Potions work."

He turned to the table in front of the class, where stood three bubbling cauldrons and a tiny vial filled with a golden liquid.

"Before you are some of the most powerful potions ever invented. The first one is called Veritaserum. Who knows what it does?"

At once both Lily's and Severus's hands shot up. Severus glanced at her, and to his surprise, she glanced at him too, before quickly looking away.

Slughorn smiled. "Well, well, it's no surprise that you two should be the first to raise your hands. Miss Evans, then."

"Veritaserum is a powerful truth serum," Lily said promptly. "Even one drop can cause someone to reveal their deepest secrets."

"Splendid, splendid, very good! Five points to Gryffindor!" Slughorn nodded in approval. "Well then, who can tell me what this next one is? By adding a bit of someone's essence to this mixture-a hair, a fingernail-before drinking it, you can take on their form for up to an hour."

Once more, Lily and Severus both raised their hands.

"Mr. Snape," Slughorn said to Severus.

"Polyjuice Potion," Severus replied.

"Excellent. Five points to Slytherin. And now," Slughorn said, hovering over the third cauldron. "This one is called Amortentia. What does it do? Yes, Miss Evans?"

"It's the most powerful love potion in the world," Lily said, a faint tremor in her voice. Severus lowered his head so that his hair hid his face, for he did not trust what sort of expression he was wearing right then.

"Quite so, quite so, Miss Evans! Five points to Gryffindor. And what does it smell like?"

"It smells different for every person," she said. Severus peeked at her through the strands of his hair. "For instance," she went on, "to me, it smells like...parchment, ink, wood smoke, and...and the riverbank back home." Her eyes slowly slid to where Severus sat, and they held each other's gaze for a moment till she abruptly looked away.

Severus swallowed hard. That was what the potion smelled like to _him_, except instead of wood smoke it was a floral essence that he knew to be the scent of her hair. What could it mean that it smelled like the riverbank back home for her, too? Could it be...?

His heart knocked painfully in his chest as Slughorn went on "Amortentia smells different for each person, as Miss Evans has pointed out, reminding them of the things that they find most attractive." Severus repressed a sigh. "It doesn't create actual love, of course," Slughorn pointed out however. "That's impossible. But it does cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. For that reason, it is probably the most dangerous potion in this room."

Severus was grimly glad that Potter wasn't there, for no doubt he would have been tempted to steal some of it, and sneak it into Lily's pumpkin juice. Merlin knew Severus was sorely tempted to do so himself.

Slughorn's next words brought Severus to attention again, as the professor picked up the tiny bottle.

"This," he said, "is Felix Felicis. Who can tell me what it does? Yes, Mr. Snape?"

"It's liquid luck," Severus replied, lowering his hand. "For the one who drinks it, everything they attempt is assured success."

"Very good, Mr. Snape. Five points to Slytherin. But it must be used sparingly, as it causes giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence if taken in excess."

"Have you ever taken it, Professor?" Lupin asked.

"I have, Mr. Lupin. Twice. And both times resulted in a perfect day each. Now," he said, setting the tiny bottle into its holder again. "Today you will brew the Draught of the Living Death, and the person who makes the most perfect brew wins this bottle of Felix Felicis."

Suddenly, Severus was hungry to win it. For, he knew if he did, he could gain Lily's trust, her friendship again, without which his life was a poisoned well. He knew he could! Severus immediately cracked open his _Advanced Potion-Making_ textbook and found the recipe for the Draught of the Living Death, gazed down at the preliminary notes he'd already made in the margins.

As the students got up to get ingredients from the supply cabinet, Severus felt someone jostle against him, and he turned to see Lily ducking her head while she murmured "Excuse me," her cheeks flushing pink.

"It's all right," Severus replied quietly, reaching for the asphodel at the same time she did. Their fingers brushed together, and immediately she snatched her hand away.

"Go ahead, you first," he said politely.

"No, go ahead," she said, turning her back on him.

He sighed, reached for the asphodel-he smiled bitterly to himself when he remembered asphodel belonged in the Lily family of plants-and measured out a portion before obtaining a handful of sopophorous beans and returning to his table.

Over the course of the hour he noticed Lily now and again peeking over at him as he made his potion, just as he peeked over at her. They both knew the other was their only real rival for the Felix Felicis potion, and he understood she was as determined to win it as he was.

He saw her crush her sopophorous beans with the flat side of her knife, and he immediately copied her, then made a note of it in his textbook when he saw how effective it was in extracting the juice from the beans. If only they were still partnered together! He knew they'd both win the prize! Yet, if she were still his partner, there wouldn't be any dire need for him to win the Felix Felicis either...

He stirred his potion clockwise every seven counterclockwise stirs, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her watching him, before she began copying his method. Why, they were both cribbing off each other! Lupin seemed oblivious to the civil war going on right across his nose, as the werewolf dumped his chopped beans into his cauldron, and frowned down at the result.

When Slughorn called time, he went around and inspected everyone's potions. Came back to Severus's. Then went back to Lily's.

"It's a close call," Slughorn said, and Severus's heart sank. Slughorn always favored Lily over him. Sure enough, Slughorn went on "But I do believe that Miss Evans' potion is a bit clearer than yours, Mr. Snape. Miss Evans wins the Felix Felicis."

To Severus's surprise, though, Lily peered over at him with an apologetic expression as Slughorn handed her the precious golden bottle, before she turned away and smiled to the professor her thanks.

Every Potions class after that, however, she remained aloof from him, not even glancing at him whenever they both raised their hands to answer a question, nor to spy on his methods as they brewed their potions. It was as though once she got what she wanted from him there was no need to pay attention to him anymore, and he mused bitterly about her female guile.

This was only one of many annoyances this term had in store for him. Another was Mulciber and Avery's little games they played with him, pretending to be his friend with false camaraderie and promises of being introduced to "those at the higher levels" (they did not explicitly say higher levels of what, but it was understood to be Voldemort's ranks), but Severus knew they were just trying to get him to do their homework for them. At any rate, he wished to prove himself by his own merits instead of getting a hand up because of doing someone a favor. He wanted Voldemort himself to take notice of him, and ask him to be in his inner circle. Considering the lack of brains among most of those who wished to join Voldemort, Severus was sure that eventually his vast superiority will be noticed, and valued.

Perhaps the most irksome difficulty he had was with the Marauders. Severus had been certain that as soon as they'd learned of his break from Lily they'd leave him alone. Not so, however. If anything, Lily's disdain for him only inspired Potter and Black to greater levels of cruelty, but at least now Avery and Mulciber were on hand to hex the Gryffindors till they were out of the way at least for a few hours. Severus didn't take it personally; he knew that, heightened as emotions were between Slytherin and Gryffindor of late, Mulciber and Avery took great pleasure in hexing any Gryffindor student, perhaps especially those pure-bloods who'd turned their backs on their heritage.

So essentially Severus's life was utterly miserable, and all he had to look forward to was the day he finished Hogwarts and took the Dark Mark at last. No one, then, would ever dare show him disrespect again.

But the strangest thing happened one Saturday afternoon as he was eating lunch. For some odd reason, the moroseness that usually enveloped him like a cloud suddenly lifted like the gloom overhead as the sun burst through it. At once he looked around the Hall toward the Gryffindor table, where he saw Lily hurry in late and sit down beside Macdonald. Strangely, Lily didn't have her back to the Slytherin table this time, but faced it, something she hadn't done all term. Stranger still, she looked up and down the Slytherin table as though she were searching for something, and when her eye caught Severus's-no, he couldn't be mistaken!-she seemed to give him a small smile, which he surprised himself by returning in kind.

After lunch, as he made his way to the lake in order to read his Potions homework for next week, he was caught short when he heard a familiar voice call out "Severus! Sev!"

_Sev_? he thought with disbelief as he turned round to find Lily running up to him, a wide smile on her face.

"Oh thank goodness," she said, grasping his arm and leading him away toward the Forbidden Forest. "I was hoping I'd get a chance to talk to you."

"What-" Severus tried, completely flummoxed. "What-what do you mean?"

"Severus, it's the most wonderful thing!" she said, squeezing his arm. "My dad, he had surgery today."

"That's wonderful?" he asked, confused. Had she lost her mind?

"No! Oh, no, not at all. But they'd rushed him into the hospital after he'd suffered a sudden massive heart attack early this morning, and Professor McGonagall informed me of it. She said there was nothing I could do, and that Mum had insisted I stay here instead of try to see him since they didn't know how long the surgery would last or whether...Well. Oh Sev, you can imagine how I felt!"

Severus nodded grimly. He knew quite well how close she was to parents. It was something he very much envied in her.

"Anyway, I felt so helpless, as you can guess. But then I remembered! Felix Felicis! Remember when I won it? Well I decided I needed all the luck I could get, so I drank the whole bottle! And what do you think? McGonagall told me right before lunch that Dad got through his surgery with flying colors, and has already made a full recovery! The doctors said it was a miracle!" Her eyes shone with tears, and she held his hands, squeezed them tight. "I get to see him tomorrow, but just think! If I hadn't won the Felix Felicis, he might have..."

"I'm very happy for you, Lily," Severus said quietly. He tried not to think of what it meant to him for her to talk to him like this, to hold his hands like she used to, as though nothing had changed.

"Oh, Sev," she exclaimed with a sob, and threw her arms around him. "I just had to tell you, since you're the only one here who really understands."

He closed his eyes as he inhaled the scent of her hair, and drew his arms tightly around her likewise. As fleeting as this no doubt would be, he savored it anyway, for he so very rarely received sunshine and fine days in his life, especially now.

"Oh, Sev!" she repeated, letting him go and beaming at him so brightly it nearly knocked him flat. "I've missed you ever so much. Please be friends with me again. Won't you?"

"Lily," he whispered, his ability to breathe flown. "Do you mean it?"

"Yes. Come on!"

"Where are we going?" he asked as she took his hand and pulled him along.

"To the Forbidden Forest!"

"Why?"

"Don't know. Just have a feeling about it."

He didn't understand, but he followed her anyway, till they got to a fallen log beneath a sunny patch amid the forest's gloom.

"Aren't you worried about dangerous creatures?" he asked her with faint amusement.

"No! Don't you see? Today, nothing can go wrong!"

"Ah," he said, thinking. He realized that everything Lily wanted would come true today, and obviously one of the things she wanted, whether she'd known it or not, was to be Severus's friend again. A layer of ice that had begun to glaze his heart in the last year melted a little, and to deflect her attention from the sting of tears forming in his eyes he asked her "What's it like, Felix Felicis?"

"It's not quite what I thought it would be," she said, clearly eager to explain. "I just feel right as rain, you know, like-well, remember how it felt to get our Hogwarts letters when we turned eleven?" Severus nodded his head, smiled a little. "Well, it's like that," she said. "Like you just _know_ good things are on the way."

It was as though her mood were infectious, and Severus found himself sharing in her happiness. Happiness! Could it be that one of the things that she wished for, too, was to see him happy?

She aimed the full force of her smile at him, and beneath the autumn sun her hair was copper sparks, her eyes a glimmer of unseasonable summer, and before he knew what he was doing he found himself leaning forward and kissing her with all his might.

For a moment he expected her to push him away in disgust. Instead, after she'd stiffened a little in surprise, he felt her hand cup the back of his neck, her fingers cool and firm against his skin as she coaxed him forward and her warm lips reciprocated his kiss.

"Lily," he heard himself say in a faraway voice when they drew apart at last, and she gazed up at him through her thick auburn lashes. "Lily, you must know that I-you have to know that I love you."

"Oh," she said in a small voice, her eyes widening.

"_Yes_," he exclaimed, going on hurriedly now that she didn't faint or run away. "I do. I always have. You, you who know me better than anyone, must have suspected it. You can't ever understand what a nightmare it's been, without you," he said, gazing earnestly into her eyes. Her own green eyes glittered with something like tears, reflecting both the sadness and the joy he felt in that moment.

But then, he added dryly "In fact, I dare say you must have known, or at least wanted it to be true, which would explain why I find myself telling you all this, today of all days."

Her cheeks flushed crimson, but he was sure it was all right. Somehow, he knew it wasn't possible for him to make a mistake with her today, because today he was compelled to do whatever she wanted, whether he knew what it entailed or not.

"I think...Well, remember the first day of Potions?" she said now. "When I won the Felix Felicis?" He nodded.

"Remember the Amortentia potion, and I said what I thought it smelled like?" she asked. Did Severus ever.

"Well...What it smelled like...it smelled like you."

"Me?" he asked blankly.

"Yes. The riverbank, you know. And of course parchment and ink because you're always studying." A smile here. "And wood smoke, because...because that's what your hair smells like."

"It does?" he asked, flabbergasted.

"Oh, Sev! Before then I was still so angry at you, I thought I was through with you forever. But then I smelled that potion, and realized..." She shrugged, bit her lip.

It was almost more than he could bear, and before he could think about it too much, he took her in his arms and kissed her again.

When he felt her fingers lace though his hair he began to tremble, and he opened his lips to allow the tip of her tongue to touch his. Merlin! How long had she wanted to do this? Surely, not for as long as he had. His mind threatened to melt with the overwhelming passion he felt for her right then, especially knowing that it was reciprocated.

"Lily, Lily," he murmured against her neck after they broke apart and he embraced her. "I want never for this to end. Promise me after today you'll still want me." He couldn't believe what he was saying to her. More so, that it was what she _wanted_ him to say.

When he felt her take his hand and press it against her breast, he gasped into her neck with astonishment. _Bloody hell_, he thought dizzily as he fingers caressed her and she sighed into his hair. "Do you have any idea what this is doing to me," he whispered against her warm skin. His blood began to pound in his ears till he was sure he would pass out. She shivered violently, then placed her hand on the inside of his thigh.

"Oh," he gasped as her fingers glided upward. Once her touch reached the source of his ache he fell apart in earnest, panting against her neck and kissing a trail up to her jaw; he could feel her pulse flutter against his lips as he did so. At the same time, his hand slowly smoothed down her robes, and she didn't stop him, not even when he began to pull up the hems, not even when his fingertips skated lightly up the soft skin of her thigh. Something like a silent firework burst in his mind when his fingers found her at last, and she whispered "Severus" almost inaudibly.

"Please Lily," he heard himself chanting to her over and over again like he were reciting a spell. He was beyond pride or shame now, she'd reduced him to the very essence of himself, which was _her_: he didn't exist without her, he knew that now.

He almost sobbed when she tugged him down to the ground with her, her hair scattered about her head like a corona of fire, her eyes green flame as she drew up her robes. He was mad, he was out of his mind, he was so much in love with her he thought he would die as he got down on his knees and possessed his darling at last. Better, so much better than the hopeless fantasies he'd entertained for so long! He wept into her hair words that would have made his face burn with shame had he not been so beyond the plane of normal perception. Mostly words of love and devotion, but also filthy things that should have induced her to slap him, but she didn't.

However, right as he was on the brink of pouring his whole heart, his soul, his life into her, she stopped him by digging her fingers into his arms, hissing "Swear it."

"What?" he asked dazedly, forcing his pelvis to stop. Her eyes were wild, faraway, and he recognized the trance of spell-binding in her gaze.

"Swear it," she whispered. "Swear you will never become a Death Eater. Swear that you will never join You Know Who. Swear it, Severus Snape."

He was dying, he was dying to finish, but he knew she wouldn't let him unless he did what she told him. "I swear, I swear," he whispered, his voice breaking. Satisfied, she released him at last, and he fell upon her with the most powerful surge of joy he had ever known.

It seemed an age before he came back to himself. By then his panting had stopped, and he had the wherewithal to glance over at her, and see how she did. The fever that had possessed him was gone now, and spent, drained, enervated, the only feeling that was left in him was a profound love and tenderness toward her.

He gently smoothed her hair from her face, cupped her cheek the way he'd wanted to that first day of Potions class. When she winced as she sat up, he said in a quiet voice "Are you all right, love?"

She nodded, gathering her robes about her, and he sat up too, and drew his arms around her protectively.

"Lily," he asked after a time, when the tempo of her breathing made him think she was going to doze off, "what spell was that?"

"I don't know," she yawned, shrugged against him. "It just seemed like the right thing to do."

And then he realized. Unbidden, a spell of ancient magic had come to her, as though by instinct. Perhaps it came to her through the ground on which they'd lain, over which centuries of sacred beasts have roamed and lived and died, and perhaps shed their magical blood. Unlike her, Severus knew many of the dark and obscure arts, and intimate magic of this kind was ancient, even older than civilization, and as binding as the Unbreakable Vow.

He knew that, whatever happened after today, he was bound to what he swore, or he would die. It meant that Severus could never, ever join Voldemort now. And he knew then that, more than anything else, this was Lily Evans' greatest wish. He wondered if she fully understood the magnitude of what she'd done.

What was luck, anyway, he wondered to himself as she lay her head on his shoulder and he held her close. Was it merely wish fulfillment? Or was it the best of all things happening to you, even if you didn't know it was the best thing? Even if it was something you did not know you wanted, and had never asked for? And what of willpower to those who did what you wanted? It was all so complex. In a way, it was an irresponsible thing for Slughorn to give that Felix Felicis to a student. But Severus didn't regret it in the least.

He kissed her passionately on the top of her head, sighed. As the sun began to set over the trees, he sensed the luck withdrawing from her, and he knew now that anything he said or did hereafter would be subject to her scrutiny.

Still, he was possessed with the habit of frankness born out of this day, and he said quietly "I hope you know that no matter what happens after this, Lily, I'll always love you." When she was about to speak he shook his head, said "I know your luck isn't making me say this. It's just the truth."

"Severus," she whispered, gazing at him in wonder. But what else could he do? He'd been stripped down to his bare essentials this day. There was nothing left in him that he hadn't shown her, there was nothing left to hide. In a way, it was a relief.

From her, he didn't expect much, after today. Perhaps some kindness, some willingness to re-kindle their friendship to a certain extent. It would be better than it had been, and he'd force himself to be satisfied with that. It'd be hard though, knowing what a soul-shattering joy it was to be in her arms, and perhaps never having it again. At least, he thought to himself, he'd always know there was a time when she'd wanted him, too.

"It's getting dark," she murmured against him. "We should get back, while my luck still holds out."

"All right," he replied, trying to keep the reluctance out of his voice.

After they stood up and cleaned themselves off as best they could (he should have felt more awkward than he did), and ensured they each were presentable, they marched out of the Forbidden Forest, but not before Lily reached for his hand. He made no comment, but he wondered at it, then decided she wanted to maintain their friendship after all.

It was suppertime, and they could hear the loud voices in the Great Hall after they entered the castle. They were late.

"Ready?" he asked her as they stood face to face outside of the doors.

"As I'll ever be," she smirked.

"Well then."

"Wait a minute. What do you think you're doing?" she asked in exasperation as he reached for the door handle.

"What-"

But she stopped him by rising up on her tiptoes and planting a kiss on his lips, then smiled at his flummoxed expression before opening the door and dashing away toward the Gryffindor table.


	2. Coming of Age

Hi, everyone:

Thanks for commenting and reading! Here's the next part. To those of you who were wondering whether the vow Lily made Severus swear to will come back to haunt them, all I can say is: you shall see. :) This part, though, deals with the inevitable fallout of Lily and Severus being a couple.

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><p><strong>PART II: COMING OF AGE<strong>

That evening, during supper, Severus did his best to keep his eyes on his plate, instead of gazing longingly at her while she sat at the Gryffindor table across the Hall. But he couldn't help glancing up at her from time to time to see her smile over at him, her expression warm and radiant, and with a something in it he'd never seen there before but which now sent a dart of heat through his being.

He noticed Macdonald frowning at her, but Lily didn't seem aware of it. And Severus's own reverie was interrupted when Avery leaned over and asked him "What's the matter, Snape? Are you ill?"

Severus immediately drew on a cold expression, said curtly "Not at all," then took a sip of his pumpkin juice.

"Well I wouldn't blame you if you were. Staring at that Mudblood like you were doing would put anyone off."

Severus gnashed his teeth, but he forbore saying anything. It was imperative that no one guessed what had happened that afternoon, for he would not reward Lily's kindness and generosity to him by letting anyone cast aspersions on her.

After supper, Severus broke from the other Slytherins and stole away to an alcove on the fifth floor where before the whole Mudblood incident they'd sometimes met in private. Perhaps it was foolish of him, but he'd hoped she'd have the same idea, and he huddled into the carved stone with a shiver of anticipation and despair, itching to kiss her again as though already addicted to it, terrified that she'd deny him, or even worse not show up-

"Severus!" he heard a whisper behind him; and he swung about only to be hugged round the waist with such force it nearly knocked him to the ground, and he returned her embrace so savagely he lifted her right off her feet.

"I didn't-I wasn't-" he stuttered incoherently into her hair, "I wasn't sure you'd come."

She made a snort of impatience as she let go of him, then giggled. "Of course I would, silly. Do you think I wouldn't, after _that_?" He felt his face flush hotly, and she laughed again.

"I wasn't certain that you'd-I thought perhaps you'd be angry with me," Severus admitted.

"Why?" she asked, and she genuinely looked puzzled.

"Because I-"_ Because I practically raped you_, he thought miserably.

It was as though she'd read his mind, for she frowned now, said "You couldn't tell I wanted to do it too? It was lovely," she sighed, and he found himself trembling violently at her words. Already he wanted her so much again, but he restrained himself, since he hadn't the faintest idea where their circumstances stood.

"I've got to get back to Gryffindor Tower," she said now, reaching for his hand. "I'm leaving early in the morning to go back home, but I should return tomorrow evening. Meet me here after supper tomorrow, won't you?" she asked.

He nodded his head up and down about ten times, squeezed her hand till he thought maybe he broke all her fingers. He still wasn't certain of their circumstances though, and therefore didn't presume to kiss her like he wanted.

Instead, she did so for him, standing on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to his. Before he could master himself, he'd drawn his arms round her, and deepened the kiss till she was left breathless.

When he released her at last she smiled up at him, her lips so red and bright his heart knocked painfully in his chest. "Does this mean I'm your girlfriend now, Sev?" she asked pragmatically.

"Only if you want to be," he replied, barely a whisper. His mind was foggy; this all had to be a dream. Only yesterday he was certain that she loathed him. And now...

"I think you know the answer to that," she replied playfully. And bestowing a last quick kiss on his mouth, she turned round and fled down the hall, her black robes swirling about her feet, her hair no longer a stop sign but a red flag to a bull.

All the next day, he wandered the castle as though in a trance, like a ghost, like a ghost who'd died and gone to heaven except the heaven was on earth and so he wandered the halls waiting for his heaven to return to him.

It was unutterable. He could hardly study for thinking about what happened the day before in the Forbidden Forest, in the alcove after supper. His whole body felt feverish, his blood was Amortentia, his mind a late-bloomed flower. Not even the Marauders' taunts could disturb his dreamlike reverie, though he longed to boast the truth to Potter, watch his smug expression crack into pieces from the shock.

_Oh, Potter, if you only knew_, Severus thought with a surge of triumph as Potter by rote called him Snivellus and Black yelled "Greasy git" and the rest of the tired refrain. Severus's lack of response to their taunts seemed to infuriate them, but instead of trying to curse them like he normally would, Severus merely protected himself with a shield charm and floated away from their attempts to hex him. Today on this day, Severus wanted nothing to interrupt his daydreaming, his hopeful plans for the future, the drowsy passion that lit his veins.

It was to be expected that, once the Marauders discovered the truth, they would be merciless to him. Severus also knew that all of Slytherin House was likely to turn on him as well. But what finally made his blood run cold was realizing that they'd turn their poison on Lily too, and he decided right then that this should not happen.

He knew she would be teased and tormented by the Gryffindors for going out with "That greasy git Snivelly" or "That Slytherin scum," and harassed by the Slytherins for being a nasty little Mudblood who didn't know her place and corrupted real wizards with her filth. The idea of this made him ill, and he made up his mind that no one should know of his and Lily's newfound understanding.

"I don't care!" she yelled at him that evening when they met in the alcove after supper and he admitted his concerns to her. "I'm not going to pretend just because they don't like it! They can mind their own bloody business!"

"But they _won't_ mind their own bloody business," Severus said miserably. "They'll torment you too. They won't leave you alone. And I can't stand it."

"I can take care of myself, Severus," she replied. "Don't worry about me."

"Right," he said sarcastically. "I won't worry about you."

"Really, it'll be fine," she assured him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

"And if it's not?" he muttered into her hair.

The next day, just as he feared, she made no bones about taking his hand in front of the entire Hall as they walked in for breakfast. It seemed to him that both the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables fell silent as she marched Severus through the door with her, before she let go of his hand, stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him, then nonchalantly went to the Gryffindor table as though nothing happened.

Immediately, the Gryffindor table was in uproar.

As Severus blindly made his way to his own table he could hear Macdonald's voice say "Lily, what did you just do? You're not going out with Snape now, are you? I thought you hated him?" and over the cacophony Black yelling "Oi, Evans! What do you mean by kissing Snivelly? Has he Imperius'd you or something?" Severus missed whatever her reply was though, for he was now staring down the long line of Slytherins who were frowning at him with identical coldness, and he had to focus his attention on giving them his most icy, superior look of disdain as he took his place and reached for a piece of toast.

It was just as bad as he predicted. All that day, the Slytherins cut him dead, when they weren't saying the most awful things to him about being a Mudblood lover, or worse, calling Lily names like Mudblood whore. He found himself tripped, hexed, and kicked violently by Potter and Black that afternoon in the courtyard before Lily, coming from her stupid Divination class, broke into the circle and shot his assailants with a freezing charm. No one, not even Avery or Mulciber, had come to his aid besides her, but as a Slytherin shot at her _his_ Levicorpus curse, Macdonald instantly raised her wand and did the countercurse before Lily was shamed in front of the school the way Potter and Black had shamed Severus the year before.

Aside from Macdonald's lone attempt at helping Lily, the entire school seemed to throw down its condemnation on their heads. He saw Lily put a brave face on it when all the Gryffindors ignored her during supper, and try as he might to smile at her from across the Hall, his heart ached for her.

Yet, that evening when they met again in the alcove, she still insisted that they shouldn't hide their relationship, especially since "Everyone knows about it now anyway so there's no point in pretending."

"You could pretend to change your mind and tell them that you broke up with me," Severus suggested, though he wrapped his arms round her and held her tight, as a talisman against this actually coming true.

"I won't let them bully, me, Severus," she said seriously, placing her hands on his shoulders as she gazed up at him. "I won't let them make me hide who I am, or be ashamed of whom I like. _They're_ the ones who should be ashamed. And I won't let them bully you, either."

"You can't protect me every moment of the day, Lily," he smiled ruefully at her determined frown. "You shouldn't have to, you know." He knew better than to be angry at her that she should take up for him as though he weren't a man. Last time he did that, she didn't speak to him for half a year.

She should have understood how it would be. But it was only when she saw how much it put Severus in danger that she greatly regretted her decision.

One evening about a week after Lily made their relationship public, Severus was skimming the edge of the lake looking for the small, dusk-blooming white flowers that Lily loved so as to present a small bundle of them to her after supper. But Severus stopped in his tracks as he heard a familiar laugh behind him, before a voice called out "All right, Snivelly?"

"Well, well, well," Severus replied as coldly as he could when he turned round to see Potter and Black standing before him. "Here we are at last. How very brave of you, Potter, to only go two against one instead of four against one. No doubt your father would be impressed with your valor."

"Don't say a word about my father," Potter sneered, taking a step toward him. "Your ugly mouth has no right to speak of him in any way."

"What have you got there, Snivelly?" Black barked, pointing to the bundle of flowers in Severus's hand. "Trying to find something that will bribe Evans to kiss you again? What's the matter, the love potion that you sneak into her pumpkin juice not doing its job?"

"You bewitched her, didn't you?" Potter suddenly hissed at Severus, the rage in his eyes unlike anything Severus had ever seen from him before. "Because there is no way she'd ever on her own let you put your nasty, stinking, greasy hands on her-"

In a way, Potter's rage was delicious to Severus, for it was the rage of defeat; Severus knew that he himself would have behaved similarly if it had been Potter who'd ended up with her.

"Ah, no, it didn't take magic for her to prefer me over you," Severus replied in a silky tone with the superiority of the triumphant. "For you see, among her other excellent qualities, she has loads of sense, as well as an appreciation of...well, shall we say brains over brawn." He smirked, summoning the memory of that first train ride to Hogwarts.

"How else did she go from loathing you to suddenly snogging you then?" Black asked baitingly. "For she did loathe you, you know. You should have heard what she said about you after you called her a Mudblood. She told everyone in Gryffindor Tower that she didn't know why she'd been friends with you in the first place, since you were such an ugly, filthy, greasy, awful git and that you must have put a spell on her the moment you two first met so that she'd like you."

"That's a lie," Severus replied, trying to maintain his calm. But Black smiled, knowing he'd hit his target.

"Is it?" Black asked smoothly. In some ways, he was even more diabolically cruel than Potter. "You weren't there, were you, Snivelly? Why don't you ask her yourself, see what she says?"

Severus raised his wand, and at once the other two did too. Suddenly Severus found himself flat on the ground unable to move, and Black laughed like a mad dog.

"What do you think, Prongs?" Black asked him as he raised his wand and levitated Severus. "Do you think Snivelly should finally have a bath?"

Severus began to panic when he found himself now floating over the surface of the lake. He didn't know how to swim.

"Maybe a quick dip into the lake would do the trick," Potter laughed in agreement. "Maybe the Giant Squid can wash his hair for him."

At once Severus felt himself plunge into the icy water, but he was still under the freezing charm and so could not move. He felt the cold water run up his nose, and his heart began to pound in his chest.

"He looks like a wet dog," Potter sneered when Black levitated Severus out of the water again and Severus gasped for air. "No wonder he detests baths."

"Oi, mate! Don't compare him to a dog!"

"You're right. He looks more like a drowned crow."

"I don't think he's clean enough, Prongs," Black observed, dunking Severus into the water again. This time Severus inhaled a mouthful of water, and he choked.

After what seemed like an eternity, Severus was finally lifted back out of the lake, though everything seemed faraway and distant, even Potter's voice as he said "I think Snivellus has learned his lesson, Sirius. He's no fun to us dead."

"I'm sure I'd like nothing better than him dead, James." There was a wild look in Black's eyes, a mad glee that caused a bolt of fear through Severus.

"Are you mad? We'll be expelled!" Potter shouted. Severus was surprised at the panic in Potter's voice now, and Severus realized he must look as drowned as he felt.

"No we won't. If Dumbledore hadn't expelled me for tricking him to play with Mooney, he won't kick us out for giving Snivelly a much-needed bath." And Severus sunk beneath the surface again.

When Severus awoke in the Infirmary some hours later, the first thing he saw was Lily sitting beside him holding his hand, her eyes red and raw from weeping.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead. "You were right. It's all my fault. You could have died, and it'd been all my fault."

"Shh," he said hoarsely, lifting his hand to her cheek. "Don't torture yourself, Lily, for standing up for us. How can I be upset that you aren't ashamed to be seen with me?" He managed a weak smile.

"Oh Sev," she replied, tears forming in her eyes again. "You're better than everyone. You're better than them all."

"As long as _you_ think so," he said, running his thumb over her cheekbone.

"Always," she replied.

The seriousness of the incident caused Dumbledore to step in at last, and that night he visited Severus in the Infirmary, and quietly asked Severus to give him his account of the events. The Headmaster's blue eyes were hard as Severus described everything as truthfully as he could, though Severus was surprised to find that the Headmaster's anger wasn't directed toward him.

"Thank you, Mr. Snape," Dumbledore said at last, rising from the chair next to him. "I believe Miss Evans is waiting to see you, and I don't want to keep her from healing you than I have to." With a twinkle in his eyes he turned and exited through the curtains that Madam Pomfrey had drawn round Severus's bed for privacy, and Lily immediately reappeared with a stack of chocolate frogs and a gentle kiss for him.

After Dumbledore had asked both Black and Potter for their wands in order to perform Priori Incantatem on them, he dismissed Black from Hogwarts for the rest of the year, and taken Potter off the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The shock of the situation resonated through the school such that many of the Gryffindors were ashamed of their behavior, and some of Lily's friends started to stand by her once more. After the events of the lake, no Slytherin attempted to hurt either she or Severus again, since it was now known that the two had Dumbledore's protection. Yet they still taunted the both of them with ugly words whenever they had the opportunity, and Severus found himself spending time in the Slytherin common room as seldom as he could.

They were the most loathed couple in Hogwarts. There was not a single person in the school who approved of them, except Slughorn, and surprisingly, the Headmaster, and perhaps even more surprisingly, Remus Lupin. When Lily insisted on tripling up with Lupin in Potions because she felt bad at the idea of leaving him partnerless just so that she could work with Severus again, Severus griped and grumbled that he would in no way sit at a table with _him_.

"Fine," Lily seethed, crossing her arms in front of her. "You can stay by yourself then."

"Why?" he snapped. "Why do you choose to be partners with that-that werewolf over me?"

"I am _not_ choosing him over you! I want us all to work together!"

"You just did! You just did choose him over me!"

"Because it's rude to abandon him like that, Severus."

"You had no qualms about abandoning me."

"UGH!" she shouted, punching him in the arm. "You're so impossible!"

At any rate, after an hour of yelling and sulking and threats she finally bullied him into sitting with both her and Lupin, though Severus muttered that the werewolf probably wouldn't enjoy it any better than Severus did and most likely would prefer to be alone rather than sit with him.

That didn't turn out to be the case, however. The werewolf didn't seem to have any issue with sitting next to Severus, though he did raise his eyebrows when Lily announced to him that they'd be working with Severus now.

"Of course he doesn't have a problem with it," Severus pointed out later when she remarked that Lupin seemed all right sharing a table with him. "Between us, his Potions work can only improve, even if it's purely by osmosis."

Besides Lupin, most of Lily's friends still reacted scornfully toward Lily's interactions with Severus. Oddly enough, however, something perverse in Severus secretly enjoyed the looks of horror on their faces when Lily thrust her hand in Severus's or kissed his cheek, as though the idea of greasy ugly Severus Snape putting his disgusting hands on their delicate, beautiful friend filled them with revulsion. Severus never instigated displays of public affection himself though, not only because he didn't wish to invite aggression against them, but also because he didn't care to wear his heart on his sleeve. But Lily often as not tended to bestow upon him ill-timed embraces, which he suffered with as much grace as he could while people made faces, sneered, or shouted rude comments at them.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," he told her one time as they studied together in the library.

"Do what?" she asked, making a note in the margin of her Potions book.

"Show me affection in public."

She looked up at him, her auburn eyebrows slanting down into a frown.

"Are you embarrassed of me?" she asked waspishly, slamming her book closed.

"What? No! Are you mad? How could I-And you-" he stuttered.

"Be quiet!" Old Pince snapped at them.

"How could you think that," he whispered into her hair. "In fact, it should be the other way around."

"I don't-"

"I know you don't," he said. "Because you're a madwoman."

"You-"

Shh, listen," he said. "I just don't like how it invites attention, that is all. Also," he added hastily when he saw by her expression she was going to start yelling again "it's like pearls before swine, you know."

She bit her lip, smiled.

"Are you saying it's too good for them to see?" she asked wryly.

"I do indeed."

"Point taken, Slytherin."

However, before he could relax and turn to his homework again, he felt a hand on his thigh, and the quill dropped from his fingers.

"Lily," he hissed as she innocently looked down at her book. Then he closed his eyes and bit his bottom lip hard so that he wouldn't make a sound that Pince-or anyone in Siberia-could hear.

Merlin's beard! How could he have guessed that anyone with such a sweet and innocent face-that anyone who was such a proper girl could be so _naughty_? He'd thought it would take him at least a year of coaxing, begging, cajoling, and bribing to get her to even consider re-enacting what had occurred in the Forbidden Forest on that Felix Felicis afternoon. In fact, barely a week after that he found himself being yanked into a broom closet by a giggling Lily Evans, where he was surprised their noises didn't bring a wild-eyed Filch or at least a suspicious Mrs. Norris to investigate.

Yet for all the passion and affection between them, they had their share of rows, most of which he inevitably lost, and the few times he didn't were victories hard won. On some points she was even more stubborn and inexorable than he was, something he'd always known about her but which seemed to grow even more pronounced in the rich, nurturing soil of his devotion. He suspected that she was so confident in his love for her that she knew he'd almost always give in eventually, and she was right.

But when she was sweet...ah, when she was sweet. When they found a quiet corner of the castle in which to be alone, and she sat in his lap, drew his head to her shoulder and just held him, her fingers running gently through his hair...Or when he would get a headache from reading too much, and she'd rub his temples, neither of them suggesting he take a headache potion instead...The way she'd quietly hold his hand sometimes beneath the table as they studied in the library, the way she'd kiss him on the brow in an almost motherly way, how she fussed over him before they went out into the cold, making sure his scarf was tucked in just so and his cloak was warm enough and where did he misplace his mittens? For the first time in his life he felt completely and utterly cared for, and he began to see some of the tenseness in his face melt away, the sharp edges softened, the scowl lifted a little on the rare, unfortunate occasions he caught a glimpse of his reflection.

Severus knew he was ugly. He'd known it almost before he'd spoken his first words. He lived with it the way he imagined Lupin lived with his own affliction. But with Lily, you'd never know it; she doted on him and touched him as though he were handsomer than even Sirius Black, her eyes soft with admiration as she gazed on him with a fondness he hardly knew how he deserved. Her nobleness only exalted her in his estimation, and the part of him that had always worshipped her now saw her as something almost goddess-like.

She also could be silly, too. There were many absurd Muggle things she cared about, and sometimes she actually preferred Muggle clothing to the more dignified robes of a witch. She could care very much for characters in a ridiculous afternoon television program, or some absurd Muggle singer with too-tight pants and a voice like a screech owl. Just because he could no longer seek to be part of Voldemort's army did not mean his disdain toward Muggles had lessened any. He still felt that most of them were what was wrong with the world, though it was pointless to ever tell her this.

That January they both came of age. Severus had never expected to receive anything from it except his independence, the ability to do magic outside of school, and to Apparate legally. Lily had other ideas. She got him a set of fine dress robes made of a rich black material, which he insisted he could not accept as being too expensive. "Well it's too late, they're already bought," she snapped angrily, and he protested "But what will I use them for? They're too fine for everyday wear." "You never know," she glared at him.

"Oh," he said quietly as he gazed down at the fine fabric. His heart thumped painfully in his chest. He wanted to ask her right at that moment but they weren't even done with school yet, and he didn't have any money, nor a job lined up, nor a home, nothing to offer her. If she only wasn't so foolish about Voldemort, he could have assumed power right away, and been able to provide her anything. As this was not to happen, perhaps she'd have been better off with someone like James, after all.

He was suddenly intensely unhappy at the bleakness of his prospects, whereas moments before he'd been satisfied with his lot. He recalled how often his mother taunted his father over his inability to provide, and he knew he couldn't stand it if that was how it would be for Lily and him. He grew sullen and cross, and the evening ended with one of the biggest rows they'd ever had. He'd felt awful about it afterward, but she didn't speak to him for days.

Her own birthday was worse. Since he'd "ruined" his by being such a "prat," she wouldn't let him do anything for her, and in fact hid in Gryffindor Tower with her friends the entire evening so that he couldn't celebrate with her at all. James and Pettigrew had laughed at him about it the next day, and told him what larks Lily's birthday party was, how there was butterbeer and even firewhiskey and food pinched from the kitchens and Lily got stinking drunk and had a great time with her _friends_. The obvious hangover she suffered the next day bore this out, and it was Severus's turn not to speak to her. In fact, it wasn't until Valentine's Day before things between them were all right again, when Severus surrendered his pride and asked if she'd go to Slughorn's Valentine's Ball with him instead of snapping at her that she should just take James and be done with it. She grudgingly accepted, and it was only when he went to get her from Gryffindor Tower that she finally smiled at him again when she saw he was wearing the dress robes she'd given him, and his ire melted into a puddle when he saw her dressed elegantly in a sparkling gown with her hair done up and her pale neck exposed, which he took full advantage of later by kissing her there till a scandalized McGonagall found them in the empty classroom they'd chosen and took twenty points each from Slytherin and Gryffindor.

Toward the end of the school year, most people had grown used to Severus and Lily, and the sneers and insults wound down to a minimum. Even the Marauders backed off; with Sirius dismissed for the rest of term, all the wind seemed to have been taken out of James' sails, or at least he was unmoved to bully anyone nearly as much without his trusty right-hand man at his side. Pettigrew did whatever James did, and Lupin, never as rabid toward Severus as the others, was now often rather friendly to Severus during Potions, a camaraderie which Severus ignored as much as he could without annoying Lily.

But even the longest of terms draw to a close at last, and the much-anticipated summer break sped toward them, after they boarded the Hogwarts Express and found a compartment with a bunch of Hufflepuff first-years who couldn't care less about the lovely witch and the crow-like wizard holding hands as they spoke quietly of the summer to come.


	3. Down By The River

PART III: DOWN BY THE RIVER

Lily had wanted to wait till they got home before she told her family about her situation with Severus. She thought it was the sort of news you didn't break over a letter.

"'Break the news'," Severus grumbled as the train chugged southward. "You make it sound as though you're telling them you got a T in all your O.W.L.s."

She punched him on the shoulder in exasperation. "It's not as though we'd only gone to Madam Puddifoot's together, Sev. If it were that, I'd drop them five words about it and be done. This is different, and not easy to explain on parchment."

"What's so difficult to explain," Severus asked, slouching in his seat.

"Really, Sev, what should I have written them then?"

When he didn't reply, she said "See? And you're not just anyone, you know. You've been my best friend since I was nine."

"With some exceptions."

"Er," she said, biting her lip. "Well, yes, that's part of the complication. They might not understand why I broke with you last summer, only to end up dating you."

"'Dating'. I detest that word. It sounds like something Mary Macdonald would say. It hardly describes what we have."

"What would you call it then?" she smiled demurely.

The fact was that there was no term profound enough to adequately describe it, so Severus shrugged, said "I don't know. Maybe we'll just have to make up a word for it."

"How about farfafuddle?" she said playfully. He made a face.

"Anyway," Lily said, her smile fading. "You know that Tuney and I are going to have a fantastic row about it."

Severus smirked. He always loathed that sister, and he knew the feeling was entirely mutual. So the idea of her blowing her top because Lily was now officially "dating" him (in truth, "farfafuddle" was no worse than the word "dating") brought him grim amusement.

"Why are you smiling?" she asked angrily. "It's not funny, Sev! I have to live with her the whole summer!"

"I don't envy you that. When it comes down to it, I think I prefer my lot to yours."

"You're the worst."

The food trolley stopped by their compartment then, and after the chattering Hufflepuffs bought their fill, Lily stood up after them and came back with some chocolate frogs, tossed one into his lap.

"Ah, I got Merlin!" Severus said with childlike satisfaction as he held up his card. "Which one did you get?"

"Morgause," Lily replied, holding up her card. She smiled. "Remember our first train trip to Hogwarts, and we got chocolate frogs and you showed me how we each get a different card and the pictures moved! Mine was Morgause then, too."

"I _do_ remember," Severus said, warm in the reminiscence. Lily brought out the side of him that could still get excited about chocolate frog cards. He decided this wasn't such a terrible thing after all.

He suddenly recalled the train ride home this time last year, and his mouth formed a bitter line before he dismissed the memory. He was determined not to dwell on the unpleasantries of the past, especially since every time he did so he grew grim and irritable and it always led to another row with her.

"What's the matter?" she asked now, seeing his expression.

"Nothing," he said shortly. "Just glad that this train trip home is nothing like last year's."

At this she sighed, then thrust her hand into his.

"Me too," she said, looking out the window.

As she leaned her head on his shoulder he wondered for the thousandth time what it was she saw in him. Oh, he knew he was learned, intelligent, an extremely talented wizard for his age. He'd never been humble about his mental and magical powers; in fact, that more people weren't impressed with his abilities was something that boggled his mind. But he knew such things weren't exactly a source of "romance" (ugh, these stupid words) to girls. He knew girls liked people such as Potter and Black, all good looks and athleticism and laughter and jokes. Severus had none of that. He supposed he was about as romantic to a girl as a crow, which is why he still could not understand for the life of him why Lily was so fond of him in that way. Maybe she was just the sort of rare girl who was attracted to intelligence. But perhaps she was also just receptive to the sort of devotion that worshipped the dirt she trod on. Somehow, Severus could never picture James worshipping her; he was always too busy worshipping himself.

Severus really didn't understand girls, much. Lily had been the only girl of his acquaintance, and even though he'd known her since he was nine, she was often quite a mystery to him. Her inexplicable moods, for instance; she could go from merry laughter to irritability in a heartbeat, and seemingly over nothing at all. She could be all over him one moment, kissing the life out of him and putting her hand on his thigh, then the next moment grow cold and stalk away. He always suspected it was because he'd done something wrong, but he could never figure out what it was, and she wouldn't tell him when he asked. "But how am I supposed to know not to do it again when you won't tell me what it is?" he asked. "You should know what it is!" she accused him. It was all very exasperating sometimes.

And yet, moments like these, when she'd inserted her little hand in his, and lay her head on his shoulder so trustingly, he knew it was all worth it, and he'd go through her stormy moods a thousand times and more, just for the warm sunshine and blue skies afterward.

* * *

><p>"I don't see why I have to. I'm not telling you to have tea with <em>my<em> parents, am I?"

"Severus," she replied testily. "They want to get to know you better, now that we're-"

"Don't say it."

"Now that we're farfafuddle," she smirked.

"They'd had eight years to get to know me," he remarked irritably.

"Well yes, but this is different."

"I don't understand why."

"Why are you being so obnoxious about it?"

He didn't want to tell her that one reason was that he had nothing appropriate to wear for the occasion. So instead, he said "I can't enjoy the idea of sitting to tea with your sister so that she can insult me for an hour."

"Fine then! Don't go!" she yelled. "Let my parents know that the boy I'm seeing is rude and not interested in meeting with them."

"Lily," he said as she pulled her t-shirt on and marched off. "Bloody hell," he grimaced, almost tripping on his loosened jeans as he got up and made to go after her. "Lily!" he called out, fastening his jeans while he followed her into the trees.

Her red ponytail swung haughtily back and forth as she stomped away pretending not to hear him. When he caught up with her and grasped her arm, she turned round and hissed at him like a cat, her eyes spitting green sparks.

"Lily I will, I will," he said hurriedly. "I'll go, all right? If it means that much to you, I'll go."

"I just don't understand why you're so reluctant to meet with them," she answered petulantly, gazing at the ground.

"Your sister-"

"That's not the only reason." She glanced up at him again. "Why won't you tell me?"

"Because-" he gestured helplessly, then dropped his hands, looked down at his worn clothing.

"Oh, Sev," she said, finally understanding. She wrapped her arm about his waist, drew him close.

"They know it's not your fault, Severus," she said gently. "I know they won't judge you for it."

"It's not-It's-I don't want their pity, Lily!" he snapped, feeling his face growing hot. "I'd rather they loathed me than feel sorry for me!"

"You're impossible, you know that?" she replied, stamping her foot.

"Well then it's too bad you didn't '_date_' Potter instead, isn't it?" he said acidly. Before he had time to blink, she'd reeled round and slapped him hard across the face.

"Blimey!" he exclaimed in shock. "What was that for?"

"How can you say such things to me," she said tearfully now, backing away from him. "I thought you loved me!" The last time he'd seen that expression on her face was when he'd called her a Mudblood, and he panicked.

"No no no no no," he stuttered, reaching out for her. "I do, I do, I don't-I don't know why I-I'm sorry-" How could she ever understand how much he loathed himself?

"That's why you practically told me to go shag Potter then, isn't it?" she said sarcastically. He blanched, sick at the thought of it.

"No! You don't-you can't-It's just that you could have anyone you want, Lily! And I know that one day you're going to realize that, and..." he didn't finish.

"And what? Funny, seems the only one I _do_ want goes out of his way to make it as difficult as possible sometimes." She put her hands on her hips, glared at him coldly.

"I don't know why you do," he replied with bitterness, sitting down on the grass.

He expected another scathing retort. Instead she sighed, then after a moment said softly "Oh, Severus."

She sunk down across from him and reached for his hand, held it in her lap.

"Sev," she said after a time, looking down at his palm, "You're so proud, you know, so smart, so talented. The most brilliant student at school. I thought you knew how much I admired that." When he didn't have anything to say to that she bit her lip, continued. "You'd never been a little boy, Severus. Even when we were nine you always seemed like a grownup to me, and I looked up at you in all things. All things, except one," she amended. "Anyway," she said. "Some part of me always figured you thought of me as just a silly girl, but tolerated me anyway. I don't think I'd have studied half as much as I did, if you hadn't goaded me on. You were always thinking of big things, important things, always had such big plans. You're the one student I know at Hogwarts who has the potential to become a great wizard." She smiled down at his hand, her lowered lashes like copper in the dappled sunlight, her hair an auburn halo.

He couldn't believe the picture she'd painted of him. He always assumed he was nothing to her but a pathetic, crouching need that dogged her heels for even the smallest scraps of her affection. But her description of him made him seem noble, brilliant, respectable-all the things he desperately wished to be, but somehow never seemed to achieve to his satisfaction. Or at least, never imagined anyone else to ever recognize in him.

"It's not just that, though," she went on, running her index finger down the heart line on his palm. He shivered. "It's also...well. You're so severe to everyone else, but the way you are with me...it's like you're my special secret, Sev, like the good candy I'd hide away on Christmas so no one else could have it but me. You're the best thing I have."

She looked up at him then, held his gaze for a long time. And it seemed to him that everything else she couldn't quite put into words she managed to say with that one look.

Before long, he found himself crawling next to her, and laying his head in her lap like a dog. As he felt her fingers card through his hair, he closed his eyes, said quietly "There has never been anyone else, ever. Just you. Only you."

In some ways, finding opportunities for an intimate liaison was even more difficult back home than at Hogwarts. While they were both of age now, and their parents couldn't really do much to prevent them from "shagging each other blind" as Lily sometimes crudely put it, they obviously couldn't do such things at either of their homes, and therefore had to be creative, and stealthy.

Hogwarts was so vast that it usually wasn't too much of a challenge to find some remote, forgotten place in the castle, say, where no one had set foot in fifty years. There was also the enormous grounds that offered similar opportunities, and with the help of a little magic, the chances of being discovered were really rather low. At home, the place they ended up relying on the most was here on the riverbank. It had never been very populated to begin with, which was one reason why Severus and Lily had chosen it as their meeting place early on. And once they remembered that they could now do magic outside of school, a simple shield charm along with an invisibility spell protected them from intruders.

The only thing left to be vigilant about was Petunia's sharp eyes. Lily told him that one time after she'd come home from one of their afternoon meetings, Petunia had exclaimed over the grass stains on Lily's dress and the leaves in her hair, and accused her of doing "things" with "that awful boy."

"Then again," Lily shrugged, "Tuney's still a virgin, since she doesn't believe in doing it before marriage."

"But you do?" he asked her dryly, winding a lock of her loosened hair around his finger.

"Shush," she replied, digging her thumb into his ribs.

"Lily!"

"Anyway, she doesn't understand," she shrugged. "And she wouldn't believe me if I were to tell her what loads of fun it is."

"Loads of fun, hm?" Severus asked her, raising his eyebrows. "Strange, I never noticed that you thought so."

"You're impossible. But poor Tuney. She's marrying that stiff shirt who sells hammers or drills or something. Isn't it bloody? Honestly, I'd rather live in a shack with someone interesting than be married to a big dull sack of money."

Severus didn't say anything, just brought the lock of hair to his face, draped it across his mouth.

She shifted onto her back and gazed up at the tree tops, smiled sadly.

"Last summer, I thought I'd never get to do this again," she said in a soft voice. "I never thought I'd be here again, with you, staring up at these branches like I'd done since I was nine." She reached her hand out for him, and he took it, feeling the unutterable grief of last summer wash over him again. "The thing is, Sev," she went on, squeezing his hand, "Without you, I don't know who I am. Does that make sense?"

She'd grown so much since last fall, it almost took his breath away. Her body, for one: as he gazed down at her now, she inspired within him a carnal lust that was staggering. She'd also grown bolder, and a bit cruder over the last year, more confident, a bit more cynical, less given to uncertainty or sentimentality. He knew the latter was due to his influence over her. Yet she was also more passionate, too, wiser, more mature in thought and opinion. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm softly, at the moment too overwhelmed by her to speak.

It was as though she'd read his mind, for she suddenly sat up, and threw her leg over his hip. Her hair tumbled around his head like a waterfall as she smiled down at him through it. He thought-no, he knew for certain, that if he couldn't have this again, he'd die. Therefore, he was more than willing to put up with Lily's family for an afternoon, even if it should shame, mortify, and bore him in the process.

* * *

><p>"Severus, what are you doing?"<p>

"Studying for N.E.W.T.s, of course."

"Studying for-? But they're not till the spring!"

Severus didn't reply, merely dipped the nib of his quill into his ink jar and scrawled a note into his Potions book.

"Sev, it's summer break!" Lily said, waving her hands in the air.

"Precisely! We should have begun long before now."

"We studied for N.E.W.T.s all last year, Severus. Don't you want to take _some_ time off during break?"

"Well? We've studied during summer break before. And as I recall, we'd studied for our O.W.L.s during break too."

More and more, Severus felt it was incumbent on him to get perfect marks in his N.E.W.T.s in order to increase his chances of good employment after school was over. Now that Lily had destroyed his attempts of becoming a Death Eater, he had to prepare himself the way ordinary wizards did, which meant, at the very least, impressing the Wizard Examinations Authority.

"Sev," she said, sitting down next to him. "I'd thought we'd have _some_ time off during the summer, before we get back to the grind when term starts."

"Lily, have you asked yourself yet what you're planning to do once school's over?" he asked without looking up from his book.

"Of course I have."

"Well then, you are probably aware that the marks one gets in one's NE.W.T.s can make a great deal of difference in one's future." Severus made another note in his book. "And I believe we'd had several weeks this summer where we'd done very little except...Er," he mumbled, his cheeks growing warm.

She giggled, and he glanced up at last to see she was wearing his favorite dress, a pale one with thin straps, fitted at the bodice, flared at the waist, covered in small green flowers. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, her smile inviting, and suddenly he knew he wasn't going to get much studying done the rest of the afternoon.

He pressed his lips together, set his quill down.

"I suppose I have a moment," he said, trying to make his voice as neutral as he could, even though his heart began to flutter as she stealthily crawled toward him, a naughty smile on her face.

It was strange how he'd gone from being the most unloved person at Hogwarts to the one who probably had the most profound intimate life out of all of them. And with the loveliest, kindest, most brilliant witch in the entire school. He held her tight to him and buried his face in her hair, inhaling deep her scent that was both a stimulant and a narcotic to him as he thanked whatever cold deity that might be up there for taking pity on him and giving him that which more than made up for the rest of his lot. Having her was akin to a miracle somehow, as though his whole existence had been doused with Felix Felicis. It was as though he knew this shouldn't be happening, and the only reason why it did was because he wanted it so very, very much.

Afterward, as she lay her head on his shoulder, she said in a drowsy warm voice, "I look forward to doing this in a proper bed one day."

The statement sent a thrill through him, and he tightened his arms round her shoulders.

"As do I," he replied firmly. "Which is why," he added with some reluctance, "which is why I should get back to studying, Lily."

"Oh." She looked up at him as though she'd never before considered just _why_ he was so ambitious. She smiled faintly at him then, and said "I suppose I should let you get to it, and stop interrupting you."

"Do I look displeased that you did?" he asked with a smirk. She laughed.

"Well," she said briskly now, sitting up and pulling her dress on, "let me help you, too. I'll run home and get my books, and-Oh Severus I almost forgot! You're invited over again tonight."

"Again?" Severus asked, his mood sinking immediately. It hadn't been as bad as he'd feared going to the Evans' for tea, but it certainly had not been something he'd want to repeat any time soon. When her expression told him she was about to start snapping at him he hastily added "All right then. When should I be over?"

"Well, how about now," she shrugged. "I'll tell them you need to study for exams. Mum and Dad will understand," she smiled. "They told me they liked how ambitious you were-though they didn't say 'ambitious', but rather 'focused'." She laughed. "But we can study at the kitchen table, which should be easier than doing so here."

He didn't know if he agreed, but he packed up his books in any case, and when they were tidy and presentable he followed her to her house.

"So, Sev," she asked him as walked together. "What is it you're planning to do once school's over?"

"I'm not certain," he said seriously. "I suppose try to get a job at the Ministry-" a sneer here "-which means my N.E.W.T. marks must be impeccable."

"Do you want to work in the Ministry?" she asked, catching the lack of enthusiasm in his voice. "What would you do there?"

"Not especially," he admitted. "Though I suppose I could always be an Auror."

"What would you prefer to do then, if you could do anything you wanted?"

He bit his tongue from exclaiming she'd prevented him from doing the only thing he'd really wanted to do, so he shrugged, said instead "I suppose anything that will provide well."

"Besides that, though," she asked, taking his hand. "Would you wish to be a professor like Slughorn?"

"Certainly not," Severus replied, wrinkling his nose. "To be around the likes of Potter and Black all day long? I'd rather be Crucio'd."

"Well then, what about becoming a potion-maker? What if-Well, Severus! What if we had our own Apothecary?" Her green eyes lit up with excitement, and once he recovered from her "_we"_ he blinked, said "Would you like that, Lily?"

"Oh, I would! Imagine! You know how much I love Potions class! Why, we'd be making potions all day long, and ordering herbs and other ingredients, and-Well, I just adore the Apothecary in Diagon Alley; imagine if we had one of our own!"

"And where would we have it?" he asked, amused at her enthusiasm.

"Hogsmeade," she replied immediately. "You've complained often enough how there wasn't an Apothecary near the school so that every time you had to order supplies you'd have to send all the way to Diagon Alley. Well! If we opened up a shop in Hogsmeade, we'd get loads of business from the school!"

He gaped at her, startled by how much she'd obviously thought this through. In truth, it wasn't a terrible idea.

"But where would we get the money to begin?" he asked her as they rounded the corner to her street.

"Dad," she answered promptly. "He asked me what I wanted when I finished school, and I told him that I'd like a small sum to set up an Apothecary in Hogsmeade."

"Lily!" Severus asked, his feet grinding to a halt. "You asked your father?"

"Yes! And he said he'd help us out!"

"I can't...I couldn't depend on you, though," Severus said, gazing down at the pavement.

"You wouldn't be! My word, Severus, it'd be you making all the complicated potions, inventing things-you know I don't have your knack for inventing new potions-why, I'd be depending on _you_!"

It all smacked of charity to him, and he couldn't stand it. It was very well for her to go ahead with it on her own, but he could not attach himself to it unless he had some way to contribute financially.

Still...the vision came to his mind of a darkened workshop where dozens of cauldrons simmered as he decanted, mixed, distilled, and prepared potions simple and complex, including his own inventions; while, out in front, a beautiful redhead ordered ingredients and smiled at customers as she wrapped their purchases and gave them advice, as she prepared packages to be sent by owl to nearby Hogwarts, and villagers dropped by at all times of the day just to bask in the radiance of her company. And, at night, after the shop was closed, they'd go upstairs where, in their rooms, he'd have her in a proper bed, bound to him for life, his love, his wife, _his_ Lily...

His hunger for this scenario to come true led the way to inspiration, and he saw that when he wasn't studying for N.E.W.T.s they could take advantage of Slughorn's preference for Lily and begin to brew potions they could sell while they were still in school. That way he could begin to hoarde money for his contribution to the shop, and...

By the time they'd reached the steps of her house he had the entire thing planned out. Between her brilliance and his genius they were sure to succeed, especially when both their single-minded wills were directed to the same cause.


	4. The Finch and the Crow

PART IV: THE FINCH AND THE CROW

WARNING: Adult content.

* * *

><p>"Oi, Evans! How can you stand letting that greasy git put his slimy mitts all over you?"<p>

"What are you doing here?" Lily yelled as Black and Potter burst into their compartment on the train.

"I'm here to make up my sixth year, which Snivelly over here saw to it I'd have to repeat," Black replied, sitting down next to Severus with a dangerous, doglike grin.

"Only as you deserve," Severus said coolly, tightening his arms around Lily's waist. "If justice had been done, you'd have been packed off to Azkaban, you worthless cur."

Immediately Potter and Black had their wands out, then seemed to realize that Lily was in the way.

"Go on, then," Severus whispered in her ear. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"Don't drool into her hair, you filthy scum," Potter sneered.

"I won't go! They'll just have to hex me too!" Lily replied, crossing her arms in front of her. "Well, go on!" she said, glaring at Potter. "Hex me!"

Severus pointed his wand at Potter, then at Black.

"You touch one hair on her head, and I will kill you," Severus said quietly.

"Oooo!" Potter mocked. "I'm so scared of big mean Snivellus."

"You'd better be," Lily told Potter. "He's been practicing the Dark Arts all summer. I know, because I've seen him. He's even invented a curse that will permanently shrivel your...er...gobstones."

"He did not!" Potter exclaimed, but he took a step backward in any case, lowered his free hand to about waist-level. Severus couldn't speak, for he was trying all his might to suppress the laughter that threatened to explode from him.

"He did! I saw him, because he practiced on the neighborhood dog." Out of the corner of his eye, Severus saw Black twitch a little. Lily went on "Poor Rudolph, lost the Gobstones Championship."

"Let's go, Padfoot," Potter said sourly, opening the compartment door. "I don't have time for little children like these two."

"Right you are, Prongs," Black replied, smoothing his hair back from his forehead with dignity. "Not everyone knows how to behave like adults."

"'Gobstones'?" Severus asked her when they were alone again. He couldn't hold it in any longer: he smothered his laugh against her shoulder, snorting and hiccoughing like the time when they were ten and she'd tackled him to the ground and tickled him till he nearly pissed his pants.

"I was making it up as I went, thanks very much," she replied, then began to giggle too.

"You're all right, Gryffindor," Severus said, trying to catch his breath. Then he started laughing all over again.

But her smile faded a little as she watched him wipe tears of mirth from his eyes, and soon her own eyes flooded before she drew her arms round his neck, whispered into his hair "I love you, Slytherin."

Instantly his body grew still, his ability to breathe suddenly gone. At last he closed his eyes and held her tight to him, conscious of nothing but the sound of his heart, faithfully beating her name.

* * *

><p>By the look on Lupin's face in Potions the next day, it was clear that the "gobstones" story had already made the rounds.<p>

"What team was your mum captain of again?" Lupin asked Severus as they sat down next to him, and Lily put her hand over her mouth to suppress her glee.

Severus shot Lily a severe look, for it was obvious that she was the one who had divulged this information about his mother to Lupin. But Lily gazed at him with a look of such utter sweetness that he let it go, grumbling to himself as the Gryffindors snorted together at the joke.

After class was over, both Lily and Severus stood up, and followed Slughorn into his office.

"A word with you, please, Sir," Lily said, speaking for both of them.

"Ah yes, if it isn't the Dream Team," Slughorn twittered jovially. "What can I do for you two?"

"Well, Sir, Severus and I were wondering if we could use an empty classroom over the term to practice our Potions work for N.E.W.T.s," Lily said. "We both very much want to receive top marks, you know, so that we have a good chance of getting jobs in the Ministry." She pinched Severus's hand when he turned to frown at her, so he followed her lead and said to Slughorn "Er, yes."

"The Ministry?" Slughorn asked, creasing his brow. "But haven't you ever considered teaching at Hogwarts?"

"Hogwarts already has a remarkable Potions teacher, Sir," Lily smiled sweetly. Severus repressed a snort.

"Well I won't be here forever you know," Slughorn grinned in return. "Don't tell anyone yet, but I'm planning to retire in a couple of years, and surely one of you bright minds would be worthy of the post! The two best Potions students I've had in my entire teaching career!"

Lily's eyes lit up for a moment at this carrot offered her, but then she shook her head, said "No, Sir, I think it must be the Ministry."

"How about you, Mr. Snape?" Slughorn asked Severus. "Does a Potions professorship tempt you?"

Before Severus could give an inelegant retort, Lily stomped on his foot beneath their robes, said for him "I think Sev and I are of one mind."

"Very well then," Slughorn replied. "I can't see it would be too much harm to let my two best students use one of the classrooms this year."

"Oh, thank you, Professor!" Lily gushed effusively. Severus had to hand it to her, she really knew how to shine someone on when she was determined. She'd have made a great Slytherin after all.

That hurdle out of the way, the next thing was to acquire ingredients for their first potion batch, which they decided would be an acne cure.

"It's simple enough, but most people are wretched at Potions and can't make it themselves, so we're sure to get loads of people buying it," Severus explained to her when they were trying to decide what to sell first. They'd bought most of the ingredients already in Diagon Alley, but they still needed fresh Bubotuber pus, which they knew they could find in the Hogwarts greenhouse. The raw stuff worked well, but most people overdid it, and in any case it wasn't always readily at hand, so it was better to make a tincture of it, with peppermint leaf and comfrey root to prevent over-drying.

Once again, it was Lily who spoke to Professor Sprout to ask her about her Herbology homework while Severus snuck into the greenhouses and nicked a Bubotuber plant. It was a nasty thing and given to sliming people, but Severus managed to escape with it in more or less one piece, and they stashed it in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom till it was time to use it.

That night, after dinner in the Great Hall, they went back to their respective House dorms to get their supplies, stopped by Moaning Myrtle's to pick up the Bubotuber plant, then snuck off to the classroom Slughorn had reserved for their use. After brewing four cauldrons' worth of the acne potion, they decanted it into eighty bottles, which they stored in a cabinet till such time as they could sell it.

"I'll write the advertisement for the _Daily Prophet_ tonight before bed," Lily said as they magically cleaned their cauldrons, "and take it to the owlry in the morning. Hey Sev," she asked, frowning down into the cauldron that she held. "Do you think we could try to sell it to the students here, too?"

"I think that's a brilliant idea," Severus replied, rather in awe of her business-savy brain. "Who better than Hogwarts students?" Yes, she would have made an excellent Slytherin.

"How will we let them know?" she asked, sending the cleaned cauldron to the top of the cabinet with her wand. "Should we circulate a flyer?"

"Word of mouth," Severus nodded promptly. "But I'll leave that up to you; no one is ever glad to see _me_ approach them." A wry smirk here.

"_I'm_ glad when you approach me."

"Are you," Severus asked, coming up to her and gazing down at her bashful smile. He put his fingers beneath her chin, gently tilted her face up to his.

"Will you show me?" he whispered, his soul melting as her eyes, almost purple in the room's candlelight, glowed in response to his question, a glow he'd long learned was only for him, only for him...

"Is the door locked," he murmured into her ear as her fingers spidered up his neck, then dug into his hair. He felt her nod against his cheek. If he lived to be as old as Nicolas Flamel, he would never, ever, ever grow tired of this.

* * *

><p>"Lumos."<p>

Behind the drawn curtains of his four-poster bed in the Slytherin dorm, as the others lay in their own beds asleep, Severus gazed down at the book of Dark Arts that Lucius Malfoy had given him as a parting gift, and sighed.

Over the last year, his overwhelming need for power had faded in the blinding inferno of his love for Lily Evans. What had begun as a schoolboy crush on her when he was nine had turned into a dark, haunted obsession by the time he was fifteen, but which now manifested itself as a delirious heat that burned him to the ground. In that incandescence, the Dark Arts seemed small and insignificant in comparison. Yet, there was still something about it that drew him, and he was disappointed to have to let it go entirely.

Sometimes, he wondered if he'd perish just by thinking about it. But no, his vow was to not join Voldemort; that vow didn't include renouncing the Dark Arts themselves. Lily's joke to Potter and Black about his practicing the Dark Arts over the summer was made innocently enough; but the fact was that he _had_ practiced them, unbeknownst to her, on the various rats and insects that infested the house in Spinner's End. He'd gotten to the point where he'd mastered them all, including the Unforgivables; he kept it a secret from her, because she would not understand.

He'd learned long ago that her pureness, her utter goodness, was in stark contrast to the ugly slug slime of his soul. While he'd easily Avada Kedavra someone without blinking if it hadn't meant Azkaban for it, she shuddered at the thought of hurting even a mouse, and that was the difference between them. She respected life, all life, even vermin: he respected no life, except hers.

Severus knew that in the eyes of the world, he was wrong and she was right. But he also knew the world itself was wrong; how otherwise to explain why creatures like his father could exist, or worse, how creatures like Potter and Black could exist, and were admired despite their devastating unfairness and cruelty? Very early in his life, Severus Snape had realized that the world was unjust, and that the only protection from it was the power to hurt and destroy.

But if he were right, then, that meant Lily was wrong. And she was the only right thing that he knew. She wasn't wrong because she was simple; on the contrary, she was by far the brightest witch he'd ever seen.

It was all very confusing. However, he knew that despite the fact that he had, for the first time in his life, experienced sweet joys because of her, that dark, slimy thing within him still pulsed, very much alive, very much hungry for glory.

He enjoyed Potions, of course, and knew that the only person in the entire school who could match him was Lily-yes, even over Slughorn; but Potions, while powerful in and of itself, didn't hold that throb of almost sensual magnificence, that total and complete control over life and death that was the sole dominion of the Dark Arts.

Severus flipped through some of the pages, scanned spells he'd long since memorized. At last he closed the book and whispered "Nox" to his wand, then settled down to sleep, letting the memory of what her eyes, her mouth, her delicate fingers looked like in the candlelight's glow this night wash away the darkness in his heart, at least for a little while.

* * *

><p>Two days later, while sitting to breakfast in the Great Hall, Severus saw an owl land before Lily at the Gryffindor table. After the owl gave her what looked to be a newspaper, she frantically flipped open the pages, then grinned brightly at something before she dashed away from her spot, robes flying.<p>

"Sev! Sev!" Lily called out to him, uncustomarily breaking ranks to plop down next to him at the Slytherin table. "Look!"

Ignoring the grimaces and whispered comments from the other Slytherin students, she shoved what turned out to be a page of the _Daily Prophet_ under his nose, and he read the small advertisement that her finger pointed to.

_Are blots on your horizon?_

_Are blemishes the prat?_

_The answer's Spot-off Potion_

_It works or money back!_

_Lilivus c/o Hogwarts_

"That's the worst rhyme I've ever seen," Severus said. "And what is 'Lilivus'? It sounds like a horrible disease."

"Fine then! You write the next one!" she yelled, then tossed the paper in his face before she stomped off.

Bloody hell.

"I'm sorry, okay? Look," he said, going after her and tugging on her sleeve. "You're right, I can't complain about anything since I didn't do it."

"I know it wasn't brilliant," Lily said, slightly mollified. "But I fell asleep when I was writing it, and the next morning I only had a minute to finish it before taking it to the owlry before breakfast." She giggled. "It was rather bad, wasn't it?"

"Very," Severus smirked in return.

"Well, if you think you could do better, you should," she said lightly, though he recognized the challenge in her eyes.

"I shall," he promised her smugly.

All that day, as he blinked dryly at his Ancient Runes textbook till his eyeballs threatened to fall out, as he suffered through the incompetence of his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, as he calculated long columns of figures in his head during Arithmancy till his skull throbbed-all through this, a poem started to weave itself like a spell in his mind, and now and again he'd write a verse of it in whatever textbook or parchment was available, lest this treasure of inspiration slip from his grasp. By the time dinner rolled round, he thought he might have it in hand, and he was eager to find some quiet space in the Slytherin common room in which to write it down after the others have gone to bed.

Before that, of course, was the Alcove after supper, where Lily talked about her Herbology and Divination and Care of Magical Creatures classes (all rubbish except for Herbology) and Severus mumbled about his own classes before she grinned at him, said "Well? Have you a verse yet?"

"I do," he replied.

"Where is it?"

"Here," he said, tapping his finger to his temple. "All that's needed is to write it down."

"I can't wait to see it."

"I cant wait to show it to you."

"I've heard that before."

"Lily!"

"Shh, it's Mrs. Norris," Lily hissed, pointing to a feline-like shadow on the hall floor.

"Bollocks," Severus said under his breath, and Lily giggled the way she always did whenever he cursed.

* * *

><p>In a corner of the Slytherin common room, after all the others had gone to sleep, Severus unrolled before him a fresh sheet of parchment paper, lay down his quill and an unopened bottle of ink.<p>

Picking up the quill, he chewed on the tip of it for a moment as he stared down at the blank paper. Finally, he dipped the nib into the inkwell, and began scratching the black ink onto the virgin sheet.

_No man's mightier than the oak_

_beneath its roots we're buried._

_By elder we die and rise again_

_by hawthorn we are married._

_From tree to tree and bower to bower_

_Birds descend while seeking shelter_

_The crow in the yew and the finch in the pine_

_In his cold bough he hears her sigh_

_Do you know the sky's cold wind_

_When there's no tree to take you in?_

_On crumbling chimneys vagrants roost_

_Disdaining charity's whored-out roof._

_Imagine if you will a sky-less crow _

_A tree ascending, a branch below_

_Apple bright and galleon gold_

_A finch in the hawthorn, taken hold_

_The dream unraveled, their wings unfold._

The next day at breakfast, Severus was startled from his inner thoughts by the sudden whoosh of several dozen owls scattering the orange juice on the Gryffindor table, taking turns landing in front of Lily and offering her bits of rolled-up parchment from their feet.

After the fifteenth or twentieth owl had held his leg out to her, Lily looked up and beamed at Severus, which caused him to stand up from his seat and, for the first time in his life, go to the Gryffindor table.

"It's orders, Sev!" Lily chirped happily as she shoved about ten rolls of parchment into his arms. "Orders for our potion! Can you believe it?"

"I say, why is Snivelly dangling his great giant nose over our table?" Potter shouted over to them.

"We're running a _business_, you stupid toerag," Lily snapped at him impatiently, before she turned to Severus again and said "I guess my poem wasn't so bad then, was it?" Then she smirked, said, "I haven't forgotten, you know. You owe me one."

He ignored this statement by gesturing to the bits of parchment saying "What are we going to do with all these?"

"Let's put them together, first." Here she took out her wand and waved it at the parchments till they were all in a bundle, then with a flick of her wrist a red string materialized and tied them together. Before Severus could recover from his admiration of her skill, she turned to him, said "We'll float them over to _you know where_" this said in a whisper "and get the orders ready tonight."

"Lily, how many orders do you think there are?"

"Don't know, about thirty or forty."

"Why that's-that's at least twenty galleons, right there," he said quietly.

"See? I told you!" she cried merrily, standing up and nearly knocking him down with her hug. "I told you we could do it!"

"Oi, take that somewhere else, it's putting me off of my food," Black complained.

To Severus's utter surprise Lily made a V-shaped hand gesture at Black, and as Lily snorted into Severus's shoulder Severus heard Black exclaim "Bloody hell! Did you see what she just did, Prongs? Snivelly's a bad influence on her..."

* * *

><p>They had dispatched the first round of orders for the acne potion, and had brewed a second round after they received even more requests for it.<p>

"All things considered, it's rather surprising that I didn't end up spotty on top of everything else," Severus mused as he stared down into one of the cauldrons.

"What do you mean?" Lily asked with a frown as she began decanting the potion into bottles.

"Only that I'm sure I don't know why whatever deity saw fit to make me as hideous as humanly possible didn't cover me with spots too and be done with it," he smirked bitterly. "At least in that way, I could have tested the potion to make sure it works."

"Don't say that," Lily said unhappily, setting down the bottle in her hand. "You are _not_ hideous."

"That's kind of you to say."

"I'm not being kind!" Lily marched up to him then, placed her hands on each side of his face.

"They just don't understand you, Severus," she said. "Do you know what I think you look like? A gypsy wizard, or an Arabian prince." She dimpled at the reference to his mother's family name. "Look at your brilliant dark eyes, Severus. They make me...well." She blushed.

"What," he whispered, taking her hands. "They make you what?"

"This." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him long.

"Severus," she gasped into his hair after he sat down on the bench and dragged her into his lap. "We have to finish the potions first."

"After, then," he breathed against her neck. "Please." Why was he so shameless around her? He'd get on the floor and beg her, if he had to.

She kissed his cheek in answer, and he reluctantly let her go so that they could finish decanting the potion into bottles.

"What do you think of love potions?" Lily asked as they were cleaning the cauldrons.

"I think they're silly," Severus sneered, though secretly he remembered when she said how Amortentia made her think of him. "Why?"

"Mary asked me if we knew how to make them," Lily replied. "I thought...well, they'd probably sell rather nicely, wouldn't they?"

Severus just gaped at her.

"Is that not a good idea?" she asked uncertainly. "Because-"

"No, on the contrary. It's a brilliant idea," Severus assured her. "We can charge whatever we want for it. And we could do a better job than those awful potions they sell at Zonko's."

"How do you know about the ones in Zonko's?"

"Never mind," Severus said hastily. He'd never admit to her that he might have considered using them on her once or twice, back before Felix Felicis happened for them.

"But...well, maybe we shouldn't," Lily debated. "After all, is it ethical to sell such a thing to people? To make them do what they normally might not?"

Lily and her moral considerations, Severus thought to himself with exasperation. But in order to mollify her, he said "Well, we won't make anything as powerful as Amortentia. Perhaps we could make a modified version of it, where it only gives someone who already fancies you a little _push_."

"And if they _don't_ fancy you it won't work, so no harm done," Lily smiled. "Yes, that's good."

"Give me some time to think about how to do this," Severus said, pondering. He couldn't believe he was considering making love potions, of all things. It was quite beneath his dignity. Yet, he was hungry to have enough money to set up their apothecary when school was done, and they had less than a year before that happened!

"Are you finished cleaning your cauldrons?" she asked now.

"Yes. Why?" he muttered, mentally going over and rejecting various ingredients for the love potion. Ashwinder eggs, certainly, but not too much; maybe he could attenuate their effects by-

"You forgot already?" she smiled, coming up to him and drawing her arms round his waist.

"Oh." A lock of his hair fell over his eyes as he blinked down at her, and she gently smoothed it away with her soft hand, touched his face.

"But if you'd rather not..." she said, glancing down demurely.

He shook his head back and forth about a dozen times saying "No no, no no," then snatched her round the waist. "'Course I do, 'course I do," he assured her as he buried his face into her neck. She made him incoherent, inarticulate, absurd; he'd never taken Amortentia in his life, but he didn't need to in order to guess what it felt like. And he guessed that it felt exactly like being in love with Lily Evans.

* * *

><p>Over the course of term, both Lily and Severus began to make a name for themselves in the wizarding world with their high-quality, effective potions. They soon had owls flying in every day requesting all manner of mixtures, including ones that didn't even exist but which Severus invented for the particular case. This only drew more business to them, when word got out that they could make <em>anything<em>. Finally, Dumbledore had to put a stop to it because the number of owls coming in was overwhelming the owlry, though he suggested privately to the ambitious pair to use the owl post at Hogsmeade instead, a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

Severus lived on hardly any sleep during that year, so feverish was he to make as many potions, tonics, elixirs, and nostrums as possible. Often he made potions outside even the ones he and Lily created, sneaking back to their workshop after she'd gone to bed where he'd brew the sorts of things he knew she would disapprove of, but which brought high prices from a certain clientele, adding even more galleons to his jealously hoarded stash.

In the meantime, Lily and he were also studying for their N.E.W.T.s, and between this and the potion-making, Severus often found himself drifting off to sleep in Arithmancy or Ancient Runes. He decided a waking potion was in order, and after he made one to his satisfaction, he suggested to Lily they brew it in bulk to sell to the other students studying for N.E.W.T.s.

One morning, in the Slytherin common room as he was handing out vials of Wake-up Potion to those who had requested it and pocketing galleons and sickles in exchange, Avery and Mulciber came up to him, said "A word with you, Snape."

As they'd not given him any notice save icy disdain over the last year, Severus raised his eyebrows at them, replied sarcastically "And to what do I owe this extreme honor?"

"We've noticed you've got yourself a tidy little business selling love potions and the like. You, and the Mudblood," Avery said.

"How very observant of you," Severus remarked acidly. "Glad to see it's only taken you, what, six months to discover this?"

"We aren't the only ones who've noticed," Mulciber said, looking pointedly at him.

"There are some who would be glad to have such a talented potion-maker in their ranks," Avery hinted. "Some who are willing to overlook your, er, questionable preferences."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Severus lied, even as he grew cold while he felt his blood pool into his feet.

"I'm sure you do," Mulciber replied quietly.

"If you'll excuse me gentlemen, I have business to conduct," Severus said in as severe a tone as he could manage, even though a whirlwind of emotions was swirling through his mind at the moment. But as he made to turn away, Avery clamped a hand on his shoulder, said "Not so fast, Snape. We'd like to request a potion, too."

"Oh?" Severus said, arching an eyebrow.

"We want Polyjuice Potion," Mulciber asked. "Enough for the two of us."

"What makes you think I'm capable of making that?"

"We know you are," Avery said impatiently. "They say you can make anything."

"We'll pay you fifty galleons for it," Mulciber said, turning away now. "Have it to us by Beltane night." And they strode off toward the common room door, their robes swirling like identical shadows.

"Sev? Are you all right?" Lily asked during Potions class that day. As it had been the full moon the night before, Lupin wasn't with them this time.

"What? Why do you ask?" he muttered, disrupted from his reverie.

"You look worried about something," Lily said, her eyes filled with concern. "Did anything happen?"

"No, no, just thinking about N.E.W.T.s coming up," he lied. There was no way in the world he could ever tell her about the conversation in the Slytherin common room that morning. He himself was still trying to sort it out in his mind, to find out how he felt about it. On the one hand, he was profoundly gratified that the Dark Lord himself should have personally taken notice of him. On the other hand, he remembered the Unbreakable Vow he made to Lily, and he shrank at the idea of helping Voldemort in any way lest he be struck down dead.

"Well, but break's coming up," she smiled at him now. "Maybe we'll find time to relax a little-or at least take some time off from making potions. And Mum and Dad would like you to have supper with us one night."

"Er, I can't," Severus hastily said, "I've got to stay here and work on something." He needed to be here in order to begin the Polyjuice Potion, though he'd yet to come up with a likely place to make it. There was no way he could let her know what he was doing; she would never countenance his making such a diabolical thing.

"But you said you were going home for break," Lily replied, her face falling.

"I uh, changed my mind," he said lamely. Merlin, think of a good excuse! "Uh, Mum wrote to me this morning, and told me to stay here for the holiday after all." As this had actually happened before in the past, he hoped that she would believe him. Maybe it would also lead her to believe it was the reason why he looked fretful today.

"Oh. I'm sorry, Severus," she said sadly, thrusting her hand into his. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too," he whispered fiercely, squeezing her hand. Only belatedly did he realize what he was sacrificing in order to stay here during break: an entire week without her, without her voice, her scent, her warm body against his...He gnashed his teeth in frustration with himself, at his inability to refuse the temptation of fifty galleons for Avery and Mulciber's Polyjuice Potion.

The night before she was to leave to go home, they stole to the classroom workshop they'd used all term, locked the door, and there on the bench he rocked over her with deadly slowness, his hands greedy on her soft pink flesh, his eyes drinking deeply from her blurred gaze so as to imprint her into his soul, so that she should not forget him for one moment while she was gone. The next morning, already aching with her absence, his mouth still tingling from the fierce kiss she'd bestowed on him before she left for Hogsmeade Station, Severus went straight to Slughorn's office, and requested a permission slip from him to check out a book from the Restricted section of the library.

"For academic reasons, of course," Severus assured Slughorn when the professor looked askance at him.

"And it has to be _that_ particular book, eh? Very well," Slughorn said reluctantly, scribbling his name on the request form. "Just don't go making mischief while Miss Evans isn't around to rein you in."

Severus repressed a scowl at these words as he took the form from Slughorn, managed to say politely "I thank you, Sir. Good day."

Once he got _Moste Potente Potions_ (over Madam Pince's skeptical questioning), he spent some time lovingly poring over the magnificent concoctions and the strangely thrilling illustrations within, till he finally turned to the Polyjuice Potion recipe. He frowned when he saw that many of the ingredients would be hard to get; even worse, that it took at least a month to brew. He was glad that Mulciber had requested it no earlier than Beltane; he could hardly have finished it any sooner.

Fortunately, Slughorn himself was going on holiday to Budapest during break, so nothing hindered Severus from breaking into Slughorn's private storage closet, and stealing the boomslang skin and other ingredients required for the potion. As the potion required a month to brew, he couldn't prepare it in his and Lily's work space, because she'd notice it when she came back from break, and ask him about it.

He finally, though reluctantly, decided on Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, as they'd often enough stored things there for later use. The problem was with Moaning Myrtle herself, whose whining and pathetic tears and nosy questions was decidedly vexing; Severus didn't know who killed her, but he definitely sympathized with her assailant's feelings.

By the time break was over he'd had most of the potion's main ingredients in hand, and he was able to welcome Lily with a relatively undisturbed mind as she flew into his arms and tackled him to the floor in their work space after supper.

"Oh Sev, I missed you so much!" she began chattering when she wasn't dropping kisses on his face. "It was so dull there, honestly, especially since Petunia would not shut up about her drill salesman, who I finally got to meet-and oh Severus, he's even worse than I expected! Petunia always calls you an 'awful boy' but I can't see how she can dare now, considering who she's marrying!"

Severus, totally uninterested in Petunia's personal life, hushed her with a deep kiss on the mouth, then held her tightly as he murmured in her hair "I missed you terribly, Lily."

"Well," she said, sitting up now, "I hope you managed to relax a little bit this week. What did you do?"

"Studied for N.E.W.T.s. Made some potions. Read." He shrugged.

"You're the worst, Severus Snape!" she laughed merrily. "Poor Sev, working so hard! I hope you weren't too bored while I was gone."

"Dreadfully board," he assured her with a smirk. Over break, he decided to himself that the way he'd respond to Mulciber and Avery's hints about the Dark Lord's interest in him was to maintain the facade that he didn't know what they'd been talking about. This was the best tactic, for now: for if he yielded to Voldemort, he was dead, yet if he directly refused him, he might as well be dead.

As April died and the month of May was born, the Polyjuice Potion was finished at last. After supper Severus stole into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, decanted the stuff, then hurried to the Slytherin common room, where Mucliber and Avery had gone too in order to apprehend him.

"Here it is," Severus whispered as he handed them two bottles. "I trust you know how to use it?"

Avery nodded, then thrust some gold into Severus's fist. "Well done, Snape," he said.

"What are you using it for?" it occurred to Severus to ask. But Avery and Mulciber merely laughed in reply, swept off with the bottles carefully cradled in their hands.

Something sent a dart of fear through Severus then, and he rushed out of the common room to his and Lily's classroom workshop, where she'd already begun brewing the batch of Calming Drought they'd been requested to make.

"Quick, quick!" Severus asked her, locking the door behind him. "What's 'farfafuddle' mean?"

"Dating?" she asked quizzically as she stirred the potion in the cauldron. "Why?"

He exhaled with relief, shook his head. Laughed.

"I just wanted to make sure that's what the word was," he said. She quirked an eyebrow at him, said "And you needed to know that right this minute."

"It's been bothering me all day," he lied. The truth was that no impostor Lily would know what farfafuddle meant.

"Maybe Petunia's right, and you are a freak," she giggled.

"Never mind that. You know what tonight is, don't you?"

"What?"

"Oh, come off it. You're one of the few people who ever actually pays attention in History of Magic class. Binns spent exactly five seconds talking about Beltane. Surely you remember?"

"It's the ancient feast where witches and wizards blessed the fields before plowing."

"Yes," Severus lilted. "And how do you suppose they 'blessed' the fields in bygone days? Binns of course would not be interested enough to mention this small detail, especially in front of schoolchildren."

He watched her puzzle over this for a moment, before her green eyes widened.

"You mean they-?"

"I do."

"Well." She smirked. "Do we need to find a plowed field, then?"

"I think the grounds will be sufficient."

"Once we're done with this potion though, Sev."

"Always business before pleasure."

"Ha ha, you of all people should talk."

"Hurry up, love, I'm quite maddened right now." He was, too. The idea of her pale body splayed upon a swathe of velvet green beneath the gaze of the waxing moon transfixed him, and he was useless in helping her until she'd decanted the potions into aliquots, and after that, they'd sneaked out of the castle, and his fantasy was fulfilled at last.

By the time they took their N.E.W.T.s that June, they had more than enough galleons from their potions business to rent a shop in Hogsmeade village. On their last night ever at Hogwarts, many of the seventh-years from different Houses congregated in a corner of the Great Hall during the end-of-term feast, so that friends from different Houses could celebrate together instead of being separated in their respective common rooms. Dumbledore cast a blind eye at the butterbeer and firewhiskey that was passed around in that corner, where Lily had dragged Severus with her as she chatted to her friends. Potter and Black had muttered and complained about it of course, but it was Severus, surprisingly, who suggested that they lighten up, since this was hopefully the last time they'd ever see each other again.

"That _is_ something to celebrate," Potter agreed, clicking his bottle of butterbeer against Black's. "Thanks for reminding us, Snivelly."

Lily, very much sentimental and only a little bit drunk, went round and dispensed hugs to them all, except for Potter and Black. Not to be outdone, Potter swooped her into his arms anyway, planted a kiss on her cheek and flipped Severus an obscene gesture, while Black laughed hysterically behind him. Before Severus could find his wand and curse Potter into oblivion, Lily broke away from Potter at last, her face burning red, and immediately she plopped into Severus's lap, and bestowed on him the sort of kiss that most certainly should not be done in public.

"You're intoxicated, Gryffindor," he said to her in a scandalized tone, ignoring the puking sounds that Black was making. "You should go to bed, at once."

"Only if you'll join me," she replied in a voice loud enough for all to hear, wriggling her eyebrows at him.

"I won't take advantage of your condition," Severus said severely, even though he began to feel tight and itchy with desire. "Macdonald," he said then, turning to Lily's friend. "I'll ask you to escort Miss Evans to her dorm room so that she can retire _safely_." He jerked his head to where Potter stood, then looked at Macdonald pointedly.

Macdonald nodded to Severus in approval, and went up to Lily, grabbed her arm. "Come on, then," she said, yanking her out of Severus's lap. "It's sleepy time."

The next morning, a hung-over Lily met Severus in the Great Hall after breakfast, where they made for Slughorn's office so that they could give him a personal goodbye. Slughorn, never missing his chance to be indispensable to an up-and-comer, told them that the honor would be all his to host "quite the wedding of the summer, I'm sure, between such a talented witch and wizard," and Severus repressed a cynical sneer while Lily thanked him graciously and told him that they'd consider his offer.

"Amusing, how he hadn't even asked if we were engaged," Severus observed sourly as he and she walked down the lane from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade station that morning after saying farewell to Slughorn.

"It _is_ amusing," Lily agreed.

He turned to her when he heard the mirth in his voice, and he arched an eyebrow, said "And what do you mean by that tone?"

"Well," she said, "after all, we'd only finished school this morning, how can he expect you to have already asked me?"

Severus was going to wait till they were back home, and do it beneath their tree by the riverbank. But Slughorn's presumption confused him so much that he stopped right in the middle of the road, and asked her point blank "Will you then?"

"That's the most unromantic proposal I've ever heard," she laughed.

"Don't toy with me, Lily," Severus pleaded with her. "I can't bear it. Please, give me your answer."

Her smile faded, and she stepped closer to him then, so close that he could see every fleck of gold in her eyes, count every one of her lashes.

"I will marry you," she whispered, her gaze steady on his own.

It was only during their final trip home on the Hogwarts Express that he dug into his pocket and withdrew a much-handled roll of parchment, silently held it out to her. As the train swayed back and forth beneath the shade of an itinerant wood, she read it, and he tried not to look at her face while she did so. Eventually, she rolled the parchment back up, gently put it into her own pocket. When she lay her head on his shoulder and held him close, as far as Severus was concerned they were wed, right then and there.


	5. Snape Apothecary

Hi everybody: thanks for your comments and et cetera! I'll reply soon. I've been mad busy this last week and haven't had time to be on here. That's why this latest installment is late. Anyway, we now go to Severus and Lily's married life. This will probably be the last chapter where things are happy for them, for soon the winds of war will disturb their tranquility...

* * *

><p>PART V: SNAPE APOTHECARY<p>

The moment he and Lily returned home from Hogwarts, Severus had been single-minded in doing everything it took to ensure things were ready before their wedding. He Apparated right back to Hogsmeade in order to find a shop to rent, which turned out to be a little ways down from the main row but available. Severus had brought with him every galleon he'd earned from his private potions-making side business, and rented the shop and the rooms above straight away, then began to collect ingredients from the Apothecary in Diagon Alley and the one in Knockturn Alley too, when he wasn't ordering them wholesale from witches and wizards who grew certain herbs especially for large-scale distribution.

Fortunately, Lily had decided the wedding should be on August 1, the traditional magical wedding date, telling him it was good luck. He was glad it would be so soon, for it was as though he was certain his luck would run out before he could bind her to him, that something would happen to take her away from him again and he could not chance that, not after he was at the very brink of complete and utter bliss.

The truth was that he didn't want a fuss at all. And if he had had his way, the only people present would have been himself, Lily, and the wizard who would bind them, for Severus felt there was no one in the world worthy enough to witness such a sacred event, the culmination of a dream he'd had for half his life.

But as there was Lily's feelings to consider, he didn't snort or make a face when she asked him things such as what sort of food he wanted at the reception, or what colors should they decorate the tent. Instead he just waved his hand and said "Choose whatever you feel is best," as he was aware that girls liked to carry on about this sort of thing. Though sometimes her patience would wear thin, and she'd say to him acidly "It'd be nice if you cared just a little, Severus." After that he'd pretend to be fascinated by the moving pictures of different kinds of cakes and bouquet arrangements she showed him, though sometimes he'd remember that she was doing all this for _their_ wedding, and he'd take more of a genuine interest.

As far as wedding guests, she'd of course invited her parents, as well as Mary Macdonald, Alice and Frank Longbottom (themselves recently wed), Horace Slughorn, and Remus Lupin.

"Why do you want to invite the _werewolf_?" Severus had demanded when she'd showed him the guest list.

"Because he's our friend, Severus!" she replied, immediately up in arms. "You have no idea how much he took our part during school, even-yes!-even standing up to James and Sirius."

"Hmph," Severus sneered in disbelief.

"He did! And he's coming to the wedding whether you want him to or not."

It was useless to argue with her; he knew that where the werewolf was concerned she was illogically as stubborn as a stone, and so he finally conceded the point by saying wearily "I suppose I should just be grateful that you don't want to invite Potter or Black as well."

He guessed that he ought to invite his mother too, though he put his foot down about his father attending. Therefore, the party, including themselves and the wizard who performed the ceremony, totaled eleven (Petunia having refused to attend outright) in Slughorn's lavishly decorated backyard.

The wedding day itself was something of a blur to him. Slughorn offered to stand up with him, and Severus grudgingly conceded, though it meant he also had to accept Slughorn's officious assistance, and Severus didn't want anybody's help in the matter. At any rate, it was all quite more than he could endure, as he stood there suddenly acutely conscious that he was only eighteen years old, in his dress robes that seemed almost too mature for his gangly form while everyone smiled at him with varying degrees of sincerity. Severus suspected that the only guests who were actually happy about this marriage were Slughorn himself, and, oddly, Lupin, whose grin to Severus seemed genuine.

Severus forgot all about them though when Lily's father led her down from the house to where Severus stood, for Severus was suddenly hit with the stark realization that he and Lily Evans were actually about to get _married_, and he suddenly felt as he did when he was nine years old and he spied on her from the bushes. The unfamiliarity of his surroundings this day had made the whole thing seem unreal. But now, very much real, and very much _her_, was Lily Evans standing next to him, her dress as simple as any of her other summer dresses except longer, her hair down around her shoulders, a band of small white flowers in her hair. They could have been standing at the riverbank right then, and it seemed as though right at that moment the last nine years of Severus's life was distilled down to the soft smile on her face as the wizard at last said "I now declare you, Severus and Lily Snape, bonded for life."

It almost took him by surprise when Lily reached for him, and he remembered they were supposed to kiss-in front of all these people! In his daze of disbelief, as his mind chanted _My wife, she is my wife now_ he might have overdone the kiss a little, which produced a ripple of laugher among the guests, and Lily smiled at him wickedly.

He for the life of him couldn't ever remember what happened after that, only that everyone except for him ate and drank and carried on while he stood around like an awkward crow and vaguely accepted people's congratulations and well wishes. Finally, about ten years later, the guests began to leave, and Lily told her mother that she guessed she and Severus would go home now. _Home_.

Immediately Severus sobered, and feeling lucid for the first time all day, he bid adieu to her parents, and held out his arm to Lily. She smiled as she took it, and a moment later, they'd Apparated to the shop in Hogsmeade village.

Severus didn't have money left over for a lavish honeymoon, nor was he particularly interested in taking one. Instead, he'd spent every waking hour getting the shop fitted up, so that they now were surrounded by shelves and shelves full of herbs and other ingredients, vials of potions and elixirs, grimoires and herbals and other potions books, everything neat, orderly, organized, and ready for business.

"But Sev," she whispered, wandering about and touching the gem-like vials. "It's even more wonderful than the Apothecary in Diagon Alley!"

"That's not all," he said, nervous as he pointed to a door behind the counter. She went toward it, and he followed her into a workshop filled with cauldrons and weighing scales and jars and bottles and all manner of utensils and tools. Her eyes glittered hungrily at the equipment, and she held up a copper cauldron, smoothed her hand over the bright cool metal.

"That's not all," Severus said again when she turned to him in awe.

"What could possibly top this?" she asked.

He now gestured to another door in the corner of the workshop, and up a narrow flight of stairs he led her into a room that looked out onto the street below. He pointed his wand at the hearth, and a cheerful fire sprang up, illuminating a parlor filled with books and simple, sturdy furniture.

"It's nothing grand," he said modestly, glancing at the floor as she turned to him. "But it's practical, and I hope you will find it acceptable."

He felt that, considering he had nothing a year ago, what he'd managed to accomplish in such a short time, at such a young age, and without the help of powerful Death Eater friends, was rather remarkable. Unlike his father, he would prove to his wife right from the beginning that he was more than capable of providing for her. But he was still afraid he'd failed to please her, to live up to the lofty standards he held himself to in order to feel he was worthy of her.

"You did all this for us," she whispered, coming up to him and laying her hands on his shoulders.

"For you," he replied simply.

She drew her arms around his waist, held him close as she lay her head on his shoulder, said softly "I love you, Slytherin."

* * *

><p>"But really, Severus, what should we call it?" Lily asked for the fiftieth time after she'd set a plate of sandwiches on one of the workshop benches, reached for one.<p>

"I don't know," Severus replied, frowning down at his cauldron before pouring in a dram of dragon's blood. "Why not just Hogsmeade Apothecary?"

"That sounds so ordinary," Lily shrugged, taking a bite of her sandwich. Lily would order lunch from The Three Broomsticks whenever she was too busy to prepare it, as it was the case today. Then she smiled, said "What about 'Lilivus'?"

Severus made a face as he stirred the potion counterclockwise, said "You must be joking."

"How about 'Farfafuddle'?"

"You're as absurd as Albus Dumbledore."

"Well then how about 'Felix Felicis'? After all, if it wasn't for Felix, we probably wouldn't be here today."

Severus glanced up at her, gave her one of his rare smiles.

"I'll think about it," he said, beaming at her fondly.

Even someone as bitter, long-suffering, and cynical as Severus Snape had to admit he seemed to have a charmed life.

First, he and Lily had in a very short period of time established a successful Apothecary in Hogsmeade, where wizards and witches all over Britain (and even sometimes beyond) sent requests for potions, elixirs, tonics, ingredients, rare recipe books, and sometimes even advice. More especially, when school term started again that fall, they did a swift business with Hogwarts, as students could receive within an hour ingredients and supplies they'd run out of, instead of a day or so if they'd ordered from Diagon Alley. Slughorn and the other professors began to bring their custom to them instead of London, and it was often that someone from the school would drop by merely to pass the time of day with Lily, who was like a beacon of welcome and cheer in the village.

No one especially came to drop by for the pleasure of Severus's company, and he was quite satisfied with that, preferring to spend his time in his workshop among the cauldrons and wormwood and newts' eyes and boomslang skin. Severus had no limits as to what he would brew for people, and he asked no questions: if a fourth-year student wanted a potion that caused one to experience violent flatulence, Severus would sell it to him, as long as the student had the money. Sometimes Lily stepped in and prevented the transaction from taking place if she felt there was a question about the ethicality of it, but Severus himself didn't care what one wanted, as long as they paid up.

Now and again though, he was faced with a quandary when he knew an order had come from a Death Eater-Lucius Malfoy or Bellatrix Lestrange, for instance. He knew better than to refuse their business, but it made him wonder if by brewing something for them-especially a poison or Veritaserum-it would somehow violate the Unbreakable Vow he'd made to Lily about not being in league with them. Such orders were always addressed exclusively to him instead of the shop; no doubt they didn't trust "that meddling little Mudblood" Lily to fulfill the order correctly, if at all.

The fact was, however, that Lily was a brilliant potions maker in her own right. She especially excelled in anything amusing, cheerful, or cosmetic, and witches all over were addicted to the delicate floral waters she distilled. But most impressively, it was she, not Severus, who had perfected the brewing of Felix Felicis, which brought a tremendous amount of business to their shop, for it was one of the most difficult potions in the wizarding world to make. Severus was extremely proud of his wife's talents and abilities, and tended to boast about them to their dinner guests on the occasions Lily invited people over, which was more often than Severus preferred.

Lily herself seemed a natural-born shopkeeper. She kept the place well stocked and selected a variety of interesting and useful things to sell, not to mention the shop was clean and attractively appointed under her hands. She also had a cheerful way of describing their wares so that customers usually left with more items than they'd originally intended to purchase.

Just as comfortable as she kept things below, so she did above. She'd turned their sturdy and practical dwelling into something enchanted and wondrous, with the simple addition of flowers and fabrics placed precisely so. After Spinner's End, Severus felt he lived in the height of luxury whenever he sat down with his tea and newspaper in his chair before the fire in the parlor, surrounded by books, clean whitewashed walls, whole furniture, sparkling glass and copperware and everything exactly what one could wish for.

But the only reason why any of it meant anything was because of Lily herself. He still couldn't believe it every time he went to bed and she crawled into his arms. He still couldn't believe it every time he woke up in the morning and felt her warm figure sleeping next to him. He quite often and unabashedly fulfilled the desire she'd expressed the year before of "doing this in a proper bed," but the sweetest part in some ways was the lie-about afterward, especially on Sunday mornings when they didn't have to wake up early and Lily, unwilling to get out of bed, floated the tea things to them from the kitchen saying "We never could do _this_ down by the river."

In the mornings she was glorious, her hair tousled and tumbled on her head, her skin glowing with the pure antemeridian light, her smile soft with the lingering traces of sleep. It was in the mornings where his defenses were weakest, and he was given to saying the most treacly things to her, which made her smile and laugh. At these times she'd smooth her fingers through his hair the way he liked, and she'd say "Slytherin, I don't think anyone has any idea what you're really like. If they knew how you were when we were alone, I doubt they'd ever believe it." Then she'd kiss him fiercely on top of the head. Afterward she'd draw a bath and he'd read a book or put his workshop in order, then they'd both dress and make calls in the village.

For an unsocial man such as himself, these Sunday calls were, oddly, one of the highlights of his week. Lily, who usually tended to favor Muggle garb, would put on a simple but splendid gown and brush her hair till it shone, and he, content with plain work robes during the week, would don something a bit finer for the occasion: simple, surely, and black, most definitely, but of very high quality. He could never think of his impoverished school years with equanimity, especially the shame of wearing tattered hand-me-down robes. Therefore, while he was no Gilderoy Lockhart, he insisted that all his items of clothing were whole, sound, and of the best material, even if they were quite plain and severe in tailoring. Lily sometimes said he reminded her of a Muggle priest or monk, to which he would scoff, as neither religion nor Muggle affairs were things he cared about in the least. Besides, he pointed out dryly, he didn't recall ever taking a vow of celibacy, to which Lily would giggle and reply "Thank Merlin!"

Thus turned out, they'd visit their neighbors, or even some of the professors at school; and Severus considered these visits his way of showing off to the world that, at nineteen years old, he had quite come up from his squalid beginnings: prosperous, well appointed, and married to the most splendid witch in all of Britain. He knew he was sober, successful, a good husband and provider-everything his father was not. Severus wasn't the least bit vain about his appearance, but even he would admit they were a rather impressive couple: he, tall and slender and brooding in his black robes, she like a delicate spring rose at his side, all pink and white and russet. He loved the contrast between them, she so auburn and fair, he so dark and sallow. He especially loved that contrast when they were in bed, her soft rosy beauty next to his angular severity.

Of the aforementioned dinner parties, Lily tended to throw one at least once a month, and Severus forbore to complain about it since in all other ways she'd made his life a paradise and he didn't want to appear ungrateful to her. Unlike Severus, Lily was a social creature, and knowing this, Severus did not try to stifle her need for company. Often she invited Alice and Frank, who strangely enough seemed to have grown to like Severus all right, though Mary Macdonald was a less frequent guest, who'd come once but seemed so uncomfortable in Severus's taciturn presence that she always made excuses afterward. Slughorn of course visited often, bringing a bottle of mead of which he drank most himself, and the inevitable crystallized pineapple, again which he exclusively consumed. One time it had been Madam Pomfrey and Pomona Sprout, whose company Severus actually enjoyed to a certain extent, for the former liked talking healing potions with him, and the latter's knowledge of herbs was interesting to Severus. However, once these professors were invited, it wouldn't do but to invite the rest, and strangely, their home became the thing for Hogwarts faculty. Even Minerva McGonagall did them the honor of gracing their house with her presence, though it was true that she'd always thought quite highly of Lily anyway when Lily was still a student.

Perhaps the most tiresome guest they received was Remus Lupin. There was no point in trying to argue the matter with Lily, for she'd just get that stubborn expression on her face, and maybe afterward the tea she served him would be cold and weak. So Severus bit his tongue and endured it, even though he was sure that Potter and Black were using the werewolf as a spy to collect information about how wretchedly Snivellus conducted his household and how unhappy poor besotted Lily must be with the greasy git.

Certainly, there was nothing that Lupin could report back to his friends that would give them any reason to gloat: Severus satisfied himself that his home had all that was required for domestic comfort, and his wife, lovely and cheerful and doting, was the antithesis of unhappy drudge. In fact, Severus went out of his way more than usual to boast to the werewolf about how very accomplished his wife was in potion-making, just in case Potter and Black thought Severus kept her locked in a dungeon or something.

"Oh, Slytherin," Lily grinned, reaching over and taking Severus's hand. "Don't exaggerate to Remus. You know I'm hardly capable of half your miracles."

"Don't listen to her, Lupin," Severus replied firmly. "I dare say that the majority of our business is due to the specialty potions she makes, and her cunning in persuading customers to buy even more than they'd planned-why, my dear, you would have made a splendid Slytherin after all."

"How dare you!" she giggled, throwing her napkin at him. "Bite your tongue, sir!"

"Protest all you like, Gryffindor," he smiled indulgently. "But word has it that you actually married one of the loathsome snakes."

The warm, loving smile she bestowed on him in answer made him forget himself for a moment, and he gazed fondly at her while he reached over and gently stroked her cheekbone with his thumb as he often did when they were alone.

It was only when the werewolf interrupted with "I recall very well that Lily was always quite good at Potions at Hogwarts" that Severus remembered they had company, and he assumed his formal demeanor again, but not before he found Lupin staring at him with an expression of wonder on his face.

After supper, a knock on the door hailed a late caller who needed an emergency batch of Pepper-up Potion. "I'll be right back up, Severus," Lily assured him, ignoring Severus's insistence that he should perform the duty instead.

"She never minds when someone calls after hours," Severus explained to Lupin, staring out the window. "She's one of those who loves helping people."

"That doesn't surprise me," Lupin replied.

Severus snorted, studied the vine growing along the windowsill outside.

"You're different with her," Lupin said suddenly.

"What?" Severus asked, swiftly turning to him.

"You're different with her," Lupin repeated, a faint smile on his face. "You're...Well, Severus. I think if you were half as kind to others as you are to Lily, you'd have a lot of friends."

"I don't need friends," Severus replied curtly, offended at Lupin's presumption.

Lupin chuckled. "I see that. I see that it's only ever been _her_ good opinion that you've sought. And I can honestly say now that you deserve it."

Severus turned to him again, frowned.

"I don't know if Lily ever told you," Lupin said, "but during seventh year I took a lot of heat from James and Sirius for standing up for you two. I'll admit I didn't quite see what she saw in you, but I never shared James and Sirius's hatred, nor had I ever felt you deserved it."

"I do not wish to take a stroll down memory lane with you, Lupin," Severus replied with as much self-possession as he could summon; the fact was that Severus longed to throw the werewolf out of his house for his cheek.

"I'm almost finished," Lupin said. "At any rate, Lily is a friend of mine, a good friend. I disliked how she seemed so hurt when James and Sirius bullied you. And when she asked me to attend your wedding, I was glad to do so, for her sake. But I had never really understood why she was so devoted to you, Severus. That is, until tonight."

"You dare-"

"Yes I do," Lupin smiled genially at him. "She's my friend too, Severus. I care about her. I want her to be happy. Now I see that she is, and it's clear why."

Before Severus could formulate a reply, he heard the sound of the door being unlatched, and his wife's voice calling out "I'm _so_ sorry about that."

"Not at all," Lupin replied, standing up as she came in. "As it is though, I should take my leave, Lily." He glanced over to Severus, smiled.

"Oh, Remus, it was so good of you to call," she said, taking his hand.

"The pleasure was all mine, I'm sure," he replied, holding her hand between his. "Lovely, as always." He let her go, turned to Severus with a nod. "Thank you for your hospitality, Severus. Good evening."

After she saw Lupin out, she came back to the parlor, where Severus had settled himself before the fire with a book.

"What are you reading?" she asked, sitting down on the arm of his chair.

"A children's book," he replied, holding up the cover: _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_, it said.

"I've never heard of it," she replied, peeking down at the pages curiously.

"Ah, yes. You wouldn't have, growing up in a Muggle household."

"Is it like Mother Goose then?"

"Pardon?"

"You know, nursery tales."

"Something like that."

"Why are you reading it?" she asked, slowly lifting off the armrest and settling into his lap.

"Someone had left it in the shop the other day," he shrugged, drawing his arm round her narrow waist. "I haven't read it, you know, since I was...well, this is how young I was: I hadn't even met you yet."

"Read me your favorite one," she asked, laying her head on his shoulder.

He turned to her then, pressed his face into her hair for a moment, closed his eyes as he inhaled her scent.

"Anything you want," he whispered into her ear.

She settled herself more comfortably on his lap, and he flipped the pages of the book back to the beginning of the story he'd been perusing as Lily had seen Lupin off.

"'There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely, winding road at twilight'," he began. As he read to her, the shadows against the walls changed shape while the candles burned down and the hearth grew dim, and by the time he finished she was fast asleep against him. Moving as little as possible, he slid the book to the floor beside his chair, then drew his arms round her protectively, closed his eyes as he lay his head against hers.

They never did agree on what to call it, after all. So in the end people just referred to it as Snape Apothecary, and the name stuck.


	6. Gathering Storms

Stuff starts getting angsty now. Eep, this was a difficult chapter to write...

* * *

><p>PART VI: GATHERING STORMS<p>

The staircase he was climbing was narrow, and so dim he could hardly see his hand before his eyes. Above him, however, there was a powdery glow of light, and he knew he must reach it, though he wasn't sure why.

At the top of the stairs, all was disorder: furniture thrown about, things smashed. But what caught his eye was the motionless figure on the floor, its hair spilling in auburn ripples across the wood-

_No._

He knelt down beside the figure, though he was already in denial, telling himself she was just asleep, or it wasn't actually her. But with a trembling hand he brushed the auburn hair from the figure's pale unmoving face, and his mind shut down against that which it could not accept.

As he drew her lifeless body to him and buried his face in her hair, everything human in him vanished, and he was nothing but a keening animal woe. Horribly, her hair still smelled the same, an essence that singed his blood and murdered his soul, just as she had been murdered. And in the end, he knew it was all his fault.

Severus covered his face with his hands, unable to breathe, longing to die. It was only when he felt someone shaking him that he removed his hands from his face and looked up to see her staring down at him in surprise.

"Severus!" she exclaimed when she saw his expression. "What's the matter, sweetheart?"

He quickly touched her cheek, her neck, frantically gazing into her face, her eyes. But it was only when he saw her breathe that he began to shake his head, the tears unstoppable now as he remembered experiencing the utter and complete destruction of his soul in the dream.

"Sev," she said gently as she wrapped her arms around him, though he could hear the note of worry in her voice. "Did you have a nightmare?"

He was unable to answer her, just wept against her shoulder as she shushed him like a child. The horror was still too raw; knowing it was just a dream did nothing to dampen the echo of exquisite pain that still rang within him. Unutterable, that one could suffer such agony, and still live.

It was a long time before he was able to get a hold of himself, and reassure her somewhat awkwardly that he was quite all right now. He felt foolish, even though just the thought of the nightmare was still enough to send a violent tremor through him. At last, Lily left him for a moment, and returned with a sleeping draught, one that she'd brewed herself and which ensured peaceful slumber. She made him take a spoonful of it, and when he did, she crawled back into bed again, and tucked his head beneath her chin as she drew her arms around him protectively. He fell into a quiet sleep that way, and in the morning neither of them mentioned the incident, nor brought it up later even when the whispers of disappearances grew more and more frequent, and people began to leave their houses less and less.

* * *

><p>In February, shortly after Lily's twentieth birthday, they received a rare and august guest, one whose advent made Lily fairly fly about their home as she tidied things that didn't need to be tidied, scrubbed walls that already sparkled, and lavished the parlor with even more flowers than she usually set out.<p>

"I sincerely doubt any of this is necessary," Severus said in annoyance as she shoved him out of his chair in order to dust it. "It's unlikely that Dumbledore will even notice."

She glared at him venomously, snapped "If you're not going to help, then get out!" and Severus sighed, went down the stairs and hid in the workshop till she was in a more biddable mood.

That evening, in the swirling snow before their shop, Albus Dumbledore Apparated, and Lily led him hastily into the parlor before the fire, offered him a cup of warm spiced mead.

"Well, Lily, Severus," Dumbledore smiled as he took the cup from her, gazed round the parlor. "Minerva did say you were quite the housekeeper, Lily, and I'm inclined to agree."

Lily shot Severus a look that seemed to say I told you so, then beamed at the headmaster, said "It's nothing, Sir." Severus snorted.

"It is a rather unexpected honor, Sir," Severus then said formally as the headmaster squinted through his spectacles at a photograph of Lily's parents on the mantel.

"Is it? I should say, I did notice that every other Hogwarts faculty member had been invited here, except myself. Perhaps that explains it." He smiled.

"We didn't wish to presume, Sir," Lily replied.

Severus withheld an impatient huff, annoyed that the man wouldn't state his business straight away. However, as though reading his mind, Dumbledore said "I thought we'd wait till after supper to chat about business. I'd first like to enjoy your notable hospitality, if it's all the same to you."

Lily utterly outdid herself that evening: supper was as good as anything that could be found at Hogwarts (better, Severus thought privately) and Lily was as charming and entertaining as she could be. After supper, she set out a blackberry cordial and a flower-bedecked pudding on the table, though as Dumbledore sipped from his glass he studied Severus for a moment, observed "You aren't having any, Severus."

"No," Severus said.

"You don't imbibe?" Dumbledore asked. Severus shook his head.

"Ah." Dumbledore smiled. "Well, after such a lovely dinner, it's a bit tiresome to follow it up with business, but now is the time for me to tell you my proposal."

As Lily leaned forward in anticipation, Severus leaned back, instantly skeptical about any offer Dumbledore could make them.

Dumbledore grew serious. "I'm sure you are not unaware of the increase in disappearances throughout Britain. I'm also sure you have a fair idea of who's behind it." He glanced pointedly at Severus, then continued. "There are some who believe that it is necessary to stop the unfolding of these events at this stage so as to prevent things from getting worse. I came here to ask if you two would like to join such an Order."

"No," Severus said instantly. "We thank you for the offer, Headmaster, but we must decline."

Lily turned to him, her eyes green sparks, and she said "You can't speak on my behalf, Severus." She turned back to Dumbledore, added "Please tell us more, Sir."

"I won't have it!" Severus demanded, slamming his fist on the table. "You shall _not_ join such an order!"

"Why not?" she shouted, standing up. "Don't pretend you don't know what the Headmaster's talking about! I know you do! You don't still-not after you promised-" she stammered, gaping at him in horror.

"I see you two need to discuss the matter before making a decision," Dumbledore said mildly.

"No, we do not. The answer is No, and that's final," Severus said coldly.

After Lily did her best to smooth over the awkwardness of this exchange, Dumbledore thanked them for a wonderful evening, and departed. But the door hadn't closed behind him for a moment before Lily whirled on Severus, spat "How dare you make decisions for me, Severus Snape. I will do what I want. And if I want to join Dumbledore's order, I will, and you can't stop me."

"No you won't!" Severus roared. "I won't have you risking your life for some misguided foolishness! Don't you see? Whether you like it or not, Voldemort is in power, and the worst thing you can do is fight against him!"

"How can you say that!" she shouted, tears forming in her eyes. "Don't you care about all the Muggleborns who are disappearing? It could be _me_ one day, Severus!"

"Those are all lies, mere gossip from people who want to make out Voldemort worse than he is."

"You're wrong! I know you're wrong," she said. She was weeping in earnest now. "And I don't care what you say, I'm going to Hogwarts tomorrow and tell Dumbledore I'll join him, and you can...you can rot with the Death Eaters!"

Knowing that she meant every word, Severus took a deep breath, closed his eyes.

"All right," he said quietly, kneeling down on the floor.

"What are you doing?" she whispered, aghast.

"You've reduced me to begging," Severus said. "I have no other choice."

"Get up off the floor," she told him, annoyed.

"_No_." He crawled over to her, reached for her hand. She tried to yank it out of his grip, but he held firm.

"Lily," he said now, gazing up at her. "I beg you. Please, do not do this. With all my heart, I beg you. You remember that dream I had." She grew still, then after a moment nodded her head. "I'd-I'd dreamed you were dead," Severus admitted, his throat already constricting at the bare thought of it. "Worse, it was all my fault. If I let you join Dumbledore's order, and something happens to you...Lily. I can't prevent you, if it's something you really want. But you must understand that if you do this, I won't be able to bear it, for fear of losing you." He closed his eyes against the tears forming in them, pressed her hand to his cheek.

"Sev, is that really why?" she asked softly, bending over and drawing her arms around him. "Not that you are against the order, but that you're afraid for me?"

"Your safety is my main concern," he agreed, though he refrained from saying that he still thought any attempt to fight against Voldemort foolhardy in the extreme.

"If it means that much to you, I won't then," she said, sighing into his hair.

It had been their worst row since the Mudblood incident, and the only major row since they married. It seemed to usher in a new, dark era of despondency and dourness between them, as actions against Muggleborns began to be printed in the _Daily Prophet_, and they saw a drop in business when certain people declined to bring their custom to their shop anymore, because of her.

One morning in April, as Severus read the paper over his morning tea, he found his fingers clenching the edges of the page when he saw a headline that said _Muggleborns Restricted from Owning Property and Holding Public Positions. _Beneath it there was a picture of a woman driven out of the Ministry building, a Mrs. Maribelle Golightly, who'd worked in the Department of Mysteries for twenty-seven years, but as she couldn't prove wizarding ancestry she'd been sacked, despite the pureblood status of her husband.

At once Severus folded up the paper, threw it into the trash bin. But he wasn't quick enough for Lily's notice, for she snatched it from the bin and unfolded it, scanned the front page with a marble expression.

"I suppose this is no longer my shop too, now," she said quietly, pushing the paper away from her. When he reached for her she flinched away, said "I'm going to visit my parents for a few hours, Severus. Mind the shop, if you will." And she was gone.

He did his best to attend to the customers in the front of the shop, but it was not his strength, and when lunch came round he left the Closed sign up, hoping she'd return in a few hours like she said. However, the sun had sunk down in the west and the sky was purple before he heard her footsteps in the parlor again.

"Why is it so dark in here?" she asked. As she reached for her wand to light the room, he rose up from his chair and wandered over to her, took her in his arms.

"Don't go again," he whispered, holding her close. "Please."

He felt her fingers smooth through his hair, and he almost wept with relief.

However, over the next couple weeks, she was despondent and unresponsive to him, barely meeting his eyes, uninterested whenever he drew her to him in bed. It wasn't just with him; she was distant to their customers in the shop, too, though he could see she tried to make an effort for the Hogwarts students when they came in.

"I feel as though I don't exist," she explained when Severus tried again to embrace her, and she shrugged him off. "It's as though I'm only your property, and I have to depend on you for-Oh! You can't know how helpless I feel, Severus!" she raged, smashing her fists against the mattress.

Severus sighed long, then nodded to himself.

"I know what will might help put you right," he said at last.

"What?"

"Joining Dumbledore's Order."

She turned to him, stared at him blankly.

"I thought you didn't want me to," she pointed out.

"I don't. Merlin knows I don't. But I can't stand to see you like this, Lily," he said, burying his face in her neck. "I can't bear to see you suffer."

"Severus," she whispered, clinging to him. Then she sighed against his hair, said "The fact that you knew this is just what would square with me...Oh, Sev," she said, reaching for his hands. "Join me. Come with me."

"I can't-"

"Yes. I want us to do this, together. It's always been you and me, Sev. We're a team. Let's make it so still, even if it means our death."

His heart stuttered painfully, yet he squeezed her hands, muttered "Headstrong, impetuous, rash, just like a Gryffindor."

"Cautious, expedient, self-preserving, just like a Slytherin," Lily smiled. "And loyal," she added softly, stroking his cheek.

"I'll send an owl to Dumbledore, let him know what we've decided," he told her.

But even after, even after she'd shown him the first glimmer of warmth in nearly a month, a cold finger of dread pressed against his heart, and he knew somehow in his bones that nothing would ever be the same again.

* * *

><p>"Ah, excellent, Severus," Dumbledore welcomed him as Severus entered the Headmaster's chambers. "And what do I owe the pleasure?"<p>

"I wished to inform you that Lily and I had decided to take you up on your offer after all," Severus said with as much self-possesion as he could muster.

The Headmaster's blue eyes flickered a little, before he smiled, and said "Splendid. I'm glad to hear it."

"If you would oblige me," Severus went on, "I'd like to know who the members are of this select group."

"Would it change your mind?" Dumbledore asked, raising his pale eyebrows over his spectacles.

Severus hesitated. Then he squared his shoulders stoically, said "No."

"Good." Dumbledore got up from his chair then, began wandering round the chamber.

"Your visitation is quite fortuitous," Dumbledore said, not answering Severus's question. "For I have news of my own that I wish to share with you."

"Indeed," Severus said politely.

"I do. As you might know, Professor Slughorn plans to retire this year." Severus felt himself stiffen a little, then he nodded, said "He's mentioned it to me, Sir."

"Well then. You can imagine we will be needing to fill his post in the fall." Dumbledore's blue gaze locked with Severus's own, and Severus had the strange feeling that the Headmaster was poking around in his mind.

"I would imagine so, Sir," Severus bowed.

"Quite." Dumbledore broke into a sudden smile. "Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to extend the invitation to you, Severus Snape. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry would be very honored if you would accept the post of Potions master next term."

"_Me_?" Severus gasped, his usual reserve failing him. "But why?"

"Why? Well, let us see. One: you'd received a perfect mark in your Potions N.E.W.T.s-no small feat, I'm sure you're aware. Two: you and your wife have established one of the most successful apothecaries in Britain-all before the age of twenty, I'll add. And Three: Professor Slughorn himself has recommended you." Dumbledore raised his palm, said somewhat regretfully "Of course, given the recent decrees of the Ministry, we are unable to hire Muggleborns at this precise time," answering Severus's unspoken question.

Severus looked at Dumbledore with skepticism. "But I'm a Slytherin, Sir," he pointed out then. "Surely you must suspect me of being in league with Voldemort?"

Faster than Severus could have expected from the old man, Dumbledore grasped Severus's left arm, pushed up the fabric of his sleeve.

"I thought not," Dumbledore said, dropping his arm. He looked right into Severus's eyes, said "You are married to a Muggleborn, Severus. A Gryffindor, at that. Why would I expect you to be in league with Voldemort?"

"To protect her," Severus answered.

Dumbledore went behind his desk again, gestured to a seat behind Severus. "Please, sit down," he said. Severus did, and Dumbledore took his own chair likewise.

"I'll get to the point," Dumbledore said now. "Severus, I am quite aware that, at one time, while you were a student at Hogwarts, you very much wanted to become a Death Eater. How I know this is of no importance. However, I also know that, sometime during your sixth year, this all changed for you, and you made different arrangements for your life after school." When Severus was about to speak, Dumbledore held up his hand. "Let me finish. I don't believe I am in error when I presume that your involvement with the former Miss Evans had a great deal of influence on your change of heart." Dumbledore paused, studied the expression on Severus's face. "I thought so," Dumbledore said. "However, I have difficulty believing that despite your, ah, unusual alliance, Voldemort himself would hesitate to recruit you personally, if he hasn't already. After all, he is willing to overlook certain 'eccentricities', shall we say, in his followers, so long as his followers have great power from which he can draw. And you have that sort of power, Severus."

"Are you saying that you believe I will yield to him? If so, then why would you wish me to teach at Hogwarts?"

"I wish you to teach at Hogwarts so that you will be protected from yielding to him," Dumbledore replied. "I wouldn't want Voldemort to have a wizard like you on his side."

"Do you suppose I value my wife so little that I'd ally myself with someone who wishes to do away with her kind?"

"No. Rather, I think you'd do so because you value her above everything." Dumbledore leaned forward, steepled his fingers together. "I'm quite sensible of what she means to you, Severus. During your sixth year I saw what you'd endured to remain with her, and because of this, I suspect that you would suffer even death for her, if it was required. Therefore I know you would take the Dark Mark if need be, so long as you thought it would assure her safety."

"You presume very much, Headmaster," Severus replied coldly, "but know very little of the facts. As it happens, I have taken the equivalent of the Unbreakable Vow to never become a Death Eater or be in league with Voldemort, so I could not join him even if I wished to."

"Ah." Dumbledore raised his eyebrows, pondered this for a moment. "It is as I thought." He smiled genially to Severus, and Severus realized that Dumbledore had tricked him into this admission.

"However," Dumbledore went on, ignoring Severus's glare, "what you've just told me makes things both easier and more complex."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

Dumbledore's smile faded, and he said quietly "Then let me tell you. I have it on good authority that Voldemort will try to recruit you, and soon. And you must tell him you will take him up on his offer."

"Are you mad?" Severus shouted, standing up from his chair. "Didn't you hear a word I'd just said? If I join him, I'll die."

"Please listen. You are to take him up on his offer, and somehow convince him to be a double agent, to spy on me."

"I won't do it."

"Don't forget, Severus, that you've joined the Order," Dumbledore said to him. "As of now, you are receiving your first command."

"But to be in league with him-"

"You wouldn't be, in your heart, would you? In fact, by doing this, you'd be in league _against_ him, for you would be able to provide me valuable information that could lead to his defeat. And by being a professor here, you-and Lily-would have all the power of Hogwarts to protect you." Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, and suddenly he looked old.

"Severus, you are the best arsenal I have against Voldemort. I can't tell you how important it is that you've decided to join us."

"You're asking me to put myself at grave risk," Severus said acidly.

"I'm asking you to risk yourself to protect your wife," Dumbledore replied. "You see how things are; they will only grow worse. Voldemort will not spare her, even if you become his most loyal servant. Eventually, she will also be offered up for sacrifice...unless Voldemort tries to recruit her, too."

"She'd never accept," Severus said with conviction.

"Very well. Then she will die, if you don't help her, Severus."

"And what of her if something happens to me?" Severus shouted now. "If something should happen to me, who will protect her?"

"I will," Dumbledore replied. "With all the power at my disposal. You have my word, Severus."

Severus sat down heavily in his seat, ran his fingers through his hair.

"There's nothing else to be done," Dumbledore said to him with sympathy. "I offer the best hope for you and Lily to survive this. Not intact, perhaps, but alive."

"One thing," Severus said quietly. "Never tell her." Dumbledore looked up at him. "Never tell her I'm working for Voldemort. She will never understand, not even if I'm doing so to defeat him."

"Is it fair to keep her in the dark?" Dumbledore asked.

"Better for her to not know and not worry, than to face every single day of her life wondering if the place from her across the table will be empty this time for good." With that he stood up and walked out the Headmaster's door without waiting to be dismissed.

* * *

><p>She was in bed already, reading a book by candlelight.<p>

"What did Dumbledore say," she asked when he came in, not looking up at him as she turned a page of the book.

"He's offered me the position of Potions master when Slughorn retires in the spring," Severus replied.

Lily dropped her book, gaped at him.

"If it makes you feel any better," Severus said now, "He hinted that the position would have been offered to you first, had circumstances not been what they were. As it is," he went on, "Hogwarts can provide you protection, even as you throw it all away to be in the Order," Severus finished, sinking down heavily on the mattress.

When she lay a hand on his shoulder he shrugged it off, shook his head. Somehow, no matter how hard he'd tried over the last few years, they were at odds again, and he knew the flavor. It was the taste of the thing that had allowed the Mudblood row to happen. It was always there, beneath their gentle smiles and snowball fights and tickle wars and hand-holding, beneath even the alcove, the workshop, the riverbank, their wedding. It was just waiting all this time to rear up again and sever them, as inevitable as Potter, as inexorable as Potter's jeers: the flavor of failure, the taste of inadequacy.

* * *

><p>"Close your mind," Dumbledore said softly. "On the ready. <em>Legilimens<em>."

_A surge of green grass, a tumble of brush as he held his breath and a child flew off a swing, her red hair streaming behind her like a flag of triumph..._

_"Nox" whispered a boy, a light going out in his four-poster bed._

"Very good, Severus," Dumbledore said, smiling with satisfaction. "Very good. Your instinct for Occlumency is strong."

Severus nodded absently, still recovering from having someone poking around in his head and uncovering his most interred memory.

"Again," Dumbledore said in a gentle voice. "On the ready, Severus. _Legilimens-"_

_"I get to see him tomorrow, but just think! If I hadn't won the Felix Felicis, he might have..." "I'm very happy for you, Lily." "Oh, Sev. I just had to tell you, since you're the only one here who really understands. Oh, Sev! I've missed you ever so much. Please be friends with me again. Won't you?" "Lily. Do you mean it?"_

_"Nox," whispered the boy, the light going out._

"Again," Dumbledore said. "On the ready, Severus. _Legilimens-"_

_Now, he embraced her in the Forbidden Forest, her eyes aglow with a love he'd never expected nor believed could be his-_

_"Nox," whispered the boy._

"Even better," Dumbledore nodded. "Once more. _Legilimens-"_

_A flash of green eyes; a pale ankle, a sallow hand grazing a knee-_

_"Nox."_

"Almost there," Dumbledore said. "Again. _Legilimens-"_

_"Nox."_

"Excellent, excellent. One more time. _Legilimens-"_

Nothing happened. Severus sat still as a stone, and Dumbledore gazed at Severus with something like awe, and sadness.

"For most, it takes years to master Occlumency," Dumbledore told him quietly. "You mastered it in an afternoon."

"Sir," Severus said, standing up and bowing to him.

"Severus," Dumbledore said, reaching for his wrist. "I'm sorry."

"For what," Severus asked coldly.

"That you should ever have what's required to master Occlumency so easily."

* * *

><p>As Severus was chopping mandrake root for a potion that Madam Pomfrey requested, Lily stepped into the workshop, a sharp frown on her face.<p>

"Lucius Malfoy is here to see you," she told him, her voice metallic with disapproval.

Severus slowly set his knife down, nodded to her. "I'll be right out."

_This it, then_, he thought. Severus was certain he knew what Lucius had come for.

"Ah, Severus," Lucius said genially when Severus came out from the workshop. "It's been a long time."

Out of the corner of his eye Severus saw Lily make a face, but he ignored this, said to Lucius formally "To what do I owe the pleasure, Lucius?"

"I was in the village for business, and I decided to drop by on an old friend." He gave Severus a chilly smile, went on "Perhaps you would like to have a drink with me at the Hog's Head Inn?"

Severus said "I'm sure I'd be pleased to do so," then turned to an incredulous Lily, said "I'll be back soon," and followed Lucius out the door.

At the Hog's Head Inn, Lucius looked around the dusty room with a moue of distaste as the innkeeper brought Lucius a green-hued beverage and Severus a cup of tea, then waited for the innkeeper to move out of ear-shot before he said "Well, Severus. I see things are well with you? Quite the successful businessman, I hear." Severus bowed.

"Rather not what I was expecting, however," Lucius went on. "I'd have thought you'd decide on rather a more...direct way of achieving distinction."

Severus raised his eyebrows, took a sip of his tea. "Oh?" he asked.

Lucius leaned forward. "I had supposed very early on-shortly after you were sorted into Slytherin, in fact-that you'd join us, Severus, eventually."

"Strange," Severus said in a severe tone, "but I don't recall ever being asked to do so." He put on an offended air.

"A mistake on our part," Lucius smiled, clearly encouraged. "But certain actions of yours led us to believe that you'd changed your mind." He cleared his throat, went on "I was rather surprised when I'd heard you'd married the Mud-married the Muggleborn."

"She can hardly be dismissed as such," Severus said coldly. "Her powers are those not often seen among ordinary witches. Certainly, not even among many pure-bloods."

"At any rate," Lucius said, ignoring this, "I suppose it's this marriage which caused you to choose the potions business as opposed to, ah, serving a more noble cause." Lucius lowered his voice, said in almost a whisper "There are those who would be pleased to have a skilled wizard such as yourself in their employ."

Severus didn't answer right away, making as though he were considering this. "Even despite my dubious alliances?" he said at last.

"That matters not," Lucius replied, waving it away with his slim pale hand. "He understands that sometimes a man might be moved to do things against his better judgment for the sake of...Well," Lucius smirked. "No one can deny that she's quite striking, Severus."

Severus repressed an angry retort as he took another sip of his tea. "What sort of employ?" he asked instead.

"Ah." Lucius smiled in approval. "It's said that you will be replacing Horace Slughorn as Potions master at Hogwarts this fall."

"I am," Severus replied briefly.

"And a better choice Dumbledore could hardly have made," Lucius observed. "I'm sure that working so closely with Dumbledore would grant you many opportunities to learn a number of useful things."

Severus could hardly believe it: instead of having to convince the Dark Lord to make him a double-agent, the job was being offered to him without his saying a word!

"Indeed," Severus said with outward calm. "However," he noted, "Dumbledore would of course never divulge anything to one whom he suspected of being in league with certain elements."

"Of course," Lucius replied, though his expression was eager. "Certainly, no one could ever learn for whom you truly worked." A pause. "Not even your wife." Lucius at last took a sip from his glass, then stood up. "I will be in contact with you soon. You will receive word in plenty of time as to when _he_ shall receive you. Good day, Severus." And with a swirl of elegant black robes Lucius Malfoy was out the door.

When Severus returned, Lily followed him into the workshop, asked angrily "What did he want?"

"Merely to catch up," Severus replied, picking up his knife and chopping the mandrake again.

"I don't believe that. Men like him don't just 'catch up' with people."

Severus looked up at her, saw that her lips were trembling.

"You didn't, did you," she asked sadly. "You didn't let him recruit you, did you Severus?"

He set down his knife, said in a quiet voice "If you recall, I made a vow to you, Lily." Seemed to him for a moment that her green eyes flashed the way they had in the Forbidden Forest that wondrous afternoon, and he knew she was recalling it too. Whatever happened to them to make them so different from how they were that golden day?

"But what if you're lying," she whispered now. "What if you broke the vow without telling me?"

"I can't lie about my death, Lily."

When she blinked at him, he said "I never told you this, but that spell you cast on me to make that vow was ancient magic, older than time. It is the equivalent of the Unbreakable Vow, which means that if I were to choose to be in league with Voldemort, I would die."

"Severus," she breathed, putting her hand over her mouth. "I didn't know."

"I know you didn't," he replied. "But I am telling you now, so that you will understand I can never-that I will never betray you."

"Oh, Sev." As she came up to him and wrapped her arms round his waist, the full realization of what had transpired in the Hog's Head Inn seemed to wash over him, and he slumped against her, closing his eyes.

As she smoothed her fingers through his hair, he pressed his face against her neck, ran his hands down her spine.

"Close the shop," he whispered against her skin as he caressed her. "Please, I need you so."

She did. And when she returned to the workshop, he led her upstairs to their bed, where he loved her in a way he hadn't for a while, the way he'd done in the shade of the Forbidden Forest that Felix Felicis afternoon, when fortune seemed permanent, and his passion for her blotted out the rest of the world.


	7. The Serpent and the Phoenix

So I'm posting this chapter a bit earlier than I normally would, since by doing so it will force me to finish the last one, which is the most difficult to complete, even though I'd written the ending and the framework for it weeks ago. This one wasn't all that easy to write, either.

P.S. please excuse my possibly gratuitous Lupin/Severus exchanges, but their friendship is my happy place :D

* * *

><p>PART VII: THE SERPENT AND THE PHOENIX<p>

In the daytime, Malfoy Manor was elegant, stately, one might even say impressive. Its grounds were immaculately kept (nary a gnome to be seen, for instance), and its hedgerows trimmed to almost obsessive precision. The marble columns and festoons of the mansion brought to mind the sepulchral ornamentation of a regent's tomb. Even beneath the light of a sunny summer's day, it felt cold to the eye.

At night, it was imposing. The hedges beneath the waning moon seemed made of onyx, and the mansion itself was carved from bone. Before the black gate, Severus checked his feelings, and found he was experiencing a sensation of grave dread, but also an almost boyish excitement. For, hard lost was the desire for power he'd fancied as a student, his innate respect for it, a respect for the Dark Arts and the one wizard who wielded them with more skill than any other. Even now, a black, secret thrill coursed through Severus at the idea that soon, within a matter of minutes perhaps, he'd meet the Dark Lord at last. Yet, when he was reminded that he was to do so with the intent to betray him-at once Severus quailed, convinced that he could not do it, he could not succeed in so delicate a task. He knew that if he failed-if the Dark Lord were ever to unearth Severus's true motives-then Severus would receive the Cruciatus curse, followed by certain death. He, and Lily.

Affirming in his mind that he could never allow anything to happen to her, the task suddenly became easy, after all. His trepidation fell away at the iron necessity of keeping her safe. It was simple, really. Thus resolved, he closed down the winding avenues of his mind, set aside his emotions, and walked forward through the black gate at last, which vanished momentarily for his passage before it asserted itself once more.

"Ah, Severus," Lucius Malfoy greeted him in the manor's anteroom with his chilly smile after the house elf let him in. "This is a visit a long time in the coming, I believe."

"Too long," Severus replied, tingeing his words with a note of reproach as he followed Lucius's billowing robes into the hall.

"Indeed. But in a moment, that shall be amended. Come along."

Through the sconce-lit hall he was led, silently but for their footsteps sinking into the thick runner carpet. The walls were of dark, ornamented wood, interrupted here and there by paintings of pale-haired, rat-faced witches and wizards in antique costume: Malfoy ancestors, undoubtedly. Their silvery eyes peered sidelong at Severus, mistrustful. Severus returned their baleful gazes, and moved on.

As Lucius led him to a heavy carved door, Severus, despite himself, felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise up, as though struck by lightning-even now, even before seeing him, Severus could feel the immense power radiating from the being in that room; he could almost taste it, a taste of iron and blood, of sulfur and utter indomitability.

Severus was about to rein in his feelings, but at the last moment allowed them to stand. Dumbledore had advised him to dissemble, to lie, only when he had to; and Severus did not have to pretend to feel awe and respect for Lord Voldemort. Those feelings were genuine. It was best to let the Dark Lord apprehend them.

He hardly knew what he'd expected when Lucius opened the door at last; but the figure sitting before him sent a thrill of dread, as of death, through Severus. Even more than the strange red eyes, even more than the alien-looking face, the alabaster skin, there was something of pure, raw malevolence in Lord Voldemort's aspect, despite his rather urbane manner as he watched Severus approach him. Indeed, his expression was almost affable; and yet, there was a look in his eyes as he studied Severus's face that unnerved Severus to the bone.

Nevertheless, Severus mustered all the self-possession in his arsenal, and he bowed ceremoniously low, the ends of his hair almost sweeping the ground. "My Lord," he murmured formally, before he stood upright again, but kept his head lowered. He heard Lucius introduce Severus to the Dark Lord, but Severus did not acknowledge it; he was too spellbound by the sensation of dizziness weaving through him, but also a strange, subterranean awe. What fantastic power! Far, far greater than Dumbledore himself! If only he hadn't sworn that vow to Lily!

"Ah. Well," came a cold, high voice, a voice that sent a spark of ice through Severus's veins. "At last we meet, Severus Snape."

Certain this was his cue to look up, Severus did so, though he did not keep his eyes long on the Dark Lord's. It wasn't merely out of respect; it was also because those red eyes seemed to burn right through Severus's own.

"I've heard much about you, Severus," Voldemort went on, a faint smile in his voice. "So much so that I have often wondered why I have not done you the honor of receiving you before now." At this he turned his glance to Lucius. Severus noticed with faint interest that Lucius seemed to visibly wither under the Dark Lord's gaze.

Voldemort turned his attention to Severus again, and at once Severus could almost feel his mind being swept as with a cold green light. Severus's Occlumency was intact, but he allowed certain pictures, sensations through so that the Dark Lord would not suspect that Severus was trying to block him.

"I can only be grateful that the Dark Lord deigns to acknowledge one of his servants," Severus said. This was true enough, as far as it went.

"Are you, though, Severus? Are you one of my servants?" The Dark Lord studied Severus's face for quite a long time. While this was happening, Severus divested himself of all remaining feeling. "For, you see," the Dark Lord went on after a while, smoothing his thumb over the armrest of his chair, "I must question why you had not offered your services of your own volition, if you had indeed been desirous of serving me."

"My Lord-" Lucius interrupted.

"_Silence_," the Dark Lord hissed. Lucius shrank back.

"Once more, Severus," the Dark Lord went on in a more silky tone. "Why, pray, had you not approached us before?"

"It is a difficulty, My Lord," Severus acknowledged, bowing his head. "You see, I am-that is to say-" Severus wanted to blanch at the idea of mentioning her, but it could not be helped. "You see, my wife is a Muggleborn, and so I had assumed that any attempts of mine to be of service to you would be rebuffed."

"You assumed," the Dark Lord observed. "You _assumed_. It's dangerous to assume too much about what I will and will not do, Severus."

"My Lord-"

"And, indeed, it is striking that, for one who is as covetous of the Dark Arts as you are-" Severus shuddered, for he'd willingly allowed the Dark Lord to see that in his mind "-for one who is evidently skilled at these greatest of Arts, and who claims to be my servant-well, it is unexpected that you should align yourself with a Mudblood."

Severus didn't reply, only cleared his mind of the anger that winked in the corners of his thoughts.

"But Lucius tells me that she is the sort of female that inspires lust in men, so perhaps you can be forgiven for falling under her spell. I am told that it happens to wizards, from time to time." The Dark Lord smiled now. It reminded Severus of nothing so much as a skull's smile.

"However, Severus. Despite your rather unfortunate marriage, you might still be of use. It is my understanding that you will soon be employed as a professor at Hogwarts." The Dark Lord looked at him. Severus nodded.

"Well, then. If you do wish to be of service to me, Severus, you may begin there. But first...Lucius!"

The Dark Lord turned to Lucius, who had been cowering by the door in silence. Lucius nodded quickly to the Dark Lord, then stepped out of the room.

"You see, Severus," the Dark Lord went on as Severus heard the wail of a woman down the hall outside. "It is expedient that you prove your loyalty to me, before any negotiations proceed." Right then, the door opened again, and, floating before Lucius, her arms and legs motionless, apparently frozen, was a witch whom Severus has seen before, but at first could not place. However, when Lucius released her from the spell, and she fell onto the floor, Severus realized that the woman before him was none other than Maribelle Golightly, the Muggleborn witch in the _Daily Prophet_ who had been sacked from the Ministry.

"Please, Sir!" Maribelle cried to Severus, holding out her hands to him. Her face was thin as though she'd been starved, and her jaw and cheek were covered in bruises. "Please, help me!"

"You have performed the Cruciatus curse on insects, spiders, and rats, Severus," the Dark Lord said to him, ignoring the witch's pleas as he read Severus's mind. "Now it is time for you to become a true master of the Dark Arts, and perform it on the most appropriate subject. You may begin."

For a moment, Severus couldn't move. This Muggleborn witch had inspired a feeling of pity in him that April when he'd read about her plight. In a way, she'd become to him the symbol of all Muggleborns throughout the land, including his wife. To perform the curse on her was, for him, akin to betrayal.

And yet, to refuse would be to incur the Dark Lord's wrath, not only on his own head, but also Lily's, Severus was sure. Thinking of his sweet, lovely wife waiting at home for him, no doubt even now preparing his supper just as he liked it, he once more summoned the iron resolve he'd conjured in front of the gate earlier that evening, and without thinking further on the matter he withdrew his wand, and pointed it at the witch before him.

"No! No, please! PLEASE! I BEG YOU!" she screamed, reaching for the hem of his robes. "PLEASE!"

His gorge rose in his throat so that he was sure he'd be ill right then and there. But he swallowed hard, and erased himself from himself.

"_Crucio_," he heard himself incant tonelessly. At once, the woman before him began to twitch in agony, and each shudder was like a blow to Severus's soul, even as the coppery, almost sensual flavor of power overtook his senses. But what else could be done? There was nothing else that could be done. It was either her, or Lily. Dimly, Severus realized that this would only be the first of many such sacrifices. But for him, it wasn't a choice; it never had been, to begin with.

* * *

><p>"Well then," Dumbledore said, smiling congenially at the assembly before him in Alice and Frank Longbottom's parlor. "I'd like to introduce to you the two newest members of the Order, Professor Severus Snape and his wife, Lily. Though I doubt very much that they need any introduction." He gestured to Severus and Lily, and the rest of the Order nodded to them, with the exception of Black and Potter, who only sneered at Severus with disdain.<p>

It was hardly joyful for Severus to find out that these two should be part of the Order as well, though he supposed it was not surprising. Nevertheless, he kept his ire in check as he drew his arm around Lily with propriety, though he couldn't help but smirk a little when Potter grimaced at this gesture.

Perhaps only Dumbledore himself could prevent the inevitable arguments and insults that would have arisen among them, as he reminded them all that they were allies now working toward a greater goal, and _must_ trust and support each other despite differences of opinion. Neither Severus nor the Marauders had any desire to pick schoolboy fights with each other in Dumbledore's presence, though Potter childishly relieved his hatred of Severus by making obscene gestures at him behind Dumbledore's back. Lupin just rolled his eyes and shook his head at them all, as did Lily.

"I say, Severus," Lupin said during a break in the meeting as he came up to Severus with a smile. "Care to step outside with me for a moment?"

Severus looked across the room to where Lily was chatting with Alice, and when she waved at him, he nodded, then glanced over at Potter, who was huddled in the corner with Black, eyes riveted on Lily as though just waiting for his chance.

"I wouldn't worry about them," Lupin said, divining Severus's thoughts. "Your wife no doubt will send both Prongs and Padfoot scurrying away with their tails between their legs, if I know that sharp tongue of hers."

"It's not their tails I'm concerned about," Severus mumbled, but he followed Lupin in any case, Lupin chuckling at Severus's remark as he led them outside.

"Ah," the werewolf said, squinting up at the waxing moon while he patted the pocket of his shirt, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "She's coming along quite nicely, isn't she? Any day now."

"Indeed," Severus replied, watching Lupin light a cigarette. The werewolf offered one to him, but Severus shook his head.

"Of course not," Lupin said, taking a drag off his cigarette. "But me, well," he shrugged. "It takes the edge off the symptoms, you know?" Then he smiled ruefully, said "Let's be frank, Severus. I know you're aware of my 'furry little problem,' as James calls it."

Severus studied Lupin's face, noticed the dark circles under his eyes. Any day now, indeed.

"Is that what you wanted to speak with me about?" Severus asked, getting to the point.

"Not particularly," Lupin smiled over his cigarette.

"Then why did you ask me out here?"

"No reason. Just liked your company, that's all."

Severus was floored by this. No one-no one ever at all, save Lily, had _ever_ sought Severus out for himself.

"Is that such a surprise?" Lupin asked, flicking the ash from his cigarette.

"No-yes-I don't," Severus replied, not knowing what he was saying. "It's just unexpected." Suddenly he was suspicious. Was this a ruse to get Severus away from Lily so that Potter could apprehend her?

"Well," Lupin shrugged, took a deep drag. Exhaled through his nose. "James and Sirius, you know-they're my best mates, of course. But sometimes, one does prefer the companionship of someone who understands the beauty of silence."

Severus felt his lips twitch despite himself, and Lupin grinned. Then the werewolf grew more serious, said quietly "And it's not often that I meet with those who know of my condition, yet don't shrink from me. It...I appreciate it, Severus."

Severus scoffed at that, replied "Won't your 'mates', as it were, accuse you of treason by associating with me?"

"Ahh," Lupin replied, waving that away. "The fact is, Severus, James will never, ever forgive you for marrying Lily. And Sirius will never forgive you for existing, I'm afraid. But we're not Hogwarts students anymore."

"Indeed we're not."

"Though I understand you'll be returning to Hogwarts in September."

"I am."

"Interesting. Didn't think you were quite the type who'd enjoy teaching."

"And what 'type' would that be?"

"No offense meant, Severus. I was merely curious. You're a mysterious fellow, you know. I rather like that a lot, to be honest."

Lupin dropped his cigarette butt onto the ground, crushed it out with the sole of his shoe. "Shall we?" he said, gesturing to the door.

"A moment, if you please," Severus replied. Lupin turned to him expectantly.

"There is...Perhaps you're unaware, since its invention is quite recent, but-" Severus hesitated, then went on. "But a very skilled wizard has invented a potion that can ease the symptoms of lycanthropy. It is not a cure," Severus added when he saw the expression that overcame Lupin's face, "but it will allow one to keep one's mental faculties intact after the transformation."

As the werewolf just stood there gaping helplessly at him, Severus cleared his throat, said "I could attempt to make it for you, if you like."

Lupin blinked at Severus for a moment, as though unable to speak. Then, he slowly reached his hands out, and grasped Severus's own.

Rather discomfited by this mute outpouring of gratitude from the werewolf, Severus took a step back, said "Very well then. Come the afternoon of the full moon. You know where to find me." And hastily he disengaged himself from Lupin's grip, and entered the Longbottoms' house once more.

* * *

><p>Toward the end of summer, Severus and Lily moved into Hogwarts castle. As the only married professor, Severus was given rooms ample enough for comfortable domestic living, high up in Ravenclaw tower where there was plenty of light instead of the dungeons of Slytherin House where his office and classroom would be, and where he would have to spend a great deal of time as the new Head of Slytherin. This detail was in deference to Lily: Severus knew that she would not be happy in the gloom of the dungeons, and he had asked Dumbledore to arrange everything to ensure her comfort, never mind his. Severus's wishes were granted, and if he had to spend half his day going up and down stairs, well, that's just how it was.<p>

Lily tried to put a brave face on it, but Severus could tell she was saddened to have to leave the Apothecary, at least for a time. The fact was, though, that Severus too was sorry for it. It had been the first happy, comfortable home he'd ever had, and it seemed to him that parting with it was an ill omen. In the meantime, Severus was able to hire a fellow Slytherin fresh out of Hogwarts to run the shop while they were gone; the young man had been a fifth-year when Severus graduated, Severus recalled, and, according to the Ministry, had received excellent marks in his Potions N.E.W.T. It didn't please Severus too much to leave his precious shop in another's hands, but there was nothing else to be done.

At first, Lily dutifully fitted up their lodgings in the castle with the requisite necessities for comfort, but her efforts lacked the flair she'd bestowed on their rooms above the Apothecary. As he watched her go about and put things in order, she'd often pause and sigh a little, a sigh that went straight to his heart. She lacked her usual energy, and while he'd serve her a potion (against her protests) to perk her up, she still tended to drag a little, and he made up his mind about something.

"Don't worry about this," he said one afternoon, coming up to her and taking from her hands the book she was arranging in a bookshelf. "Let me do it."

"You? Humph," she scoffed, though she smiled a little as she did so. "Men know nothing about arranging things."

"Have you seen my office yet? I beg to differ," he replied, rather proud of how he'd fitted up the chamber with his Potions books, ingredients, cauldrons, and other wares. "But never mind that," he added, leading her to a chair. "Sit down, get off your feet. I know this has been a strain for you, and you should rest."

"I'm not an old hag, Sev," she said tartly, but she sat down as he bid. He noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the wanness in her cheeks that quenched the rosiness, and he said "I think it might be time for us to take a vacation, don't you think?"

"What!" she asked in surprise. "A vacation? Now?"

"No, I mean in sixty years. Of course I mean now."

"But why? It's dangerous! You even said-"

"Not if I can arrange things. Look." He took her hands. "Think of it as the honeymoon we never had."

She laughed. "Two years later?"

"Never mind that. Just tell me where you want to go, and we'll do it."

"Really?" she beamed up at him like a little girl, like the old Lily of yore, and he had to swallow hard to keep the tears from stinging his eyes.

"Yes, really," he said to her, caressing her cheek like she was a little girl indeed. "Anywhere you want, my sweet."

The fact was that he, too, desired to get away for a while and forget all this before term started. The only difficulty was Lord Voldemort. Since Lucius had told Severus that he would not be expected to take the Dark Mark-for now-lest his wife or anyone else see it and know he was in league with the Dark Lord, Lucius had devised another way of summoning Severus when he was ordered, a spell where a galleon that Lucius had given him would grow hot if he were needed. It would be bad if he were summoned while on vacation, but he could always tell Lily that it was Dumbledore who required him. There was nothing else to be done.

At any rate, Lily chose Paris, where, amid the accents and the strangeness of the customs-the French wizarding world being even more offbeat to him than the French Muggles-amid the odd, yet charming architecture and the scent of rain in the city even when it wasn't raining, and the trees, and the flowers, and Lily's happiness at being there...For perhaps the first time in his life, Severus let his guard down a little in Paris, where it seemed as though the world of the Dark Lord was far, far away, and his wife, his lovely, smiling wife, was so very near. He'd never been abroad before, and while perhaps France wasn't a vast distance from Britain, its scent, its light, its aura may have very well been at the opposite end of the solar system in terms of what he was used to. There was a feeling in the air that opened his secretive, mistrustful heart just a bit, and he was less dour than usual in the cafes and shops that Lily dragged him to. He even found himself plucking a deep red rose from a florist one morning, handing the man the obscure French currency for it in exchange on his way back to their rooms after he'd gone to fetch his bride a coffee, drowning in sugar in cream. She was still asleep when he returned, and he set the coffee on the nightstand next to the old-fashioned iron bed, but placed the rose beside her on the pillow so that it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. After he'd sat about ten minutes in the chair opposite the bed, gazing dreamily at her instead of attending to the book in his lap, her eyelids fluttered open, and she smiled softly when she saw the flower.

"Oh Severus, you know how I've missed the flowers from our little yard behind the Apothecary," she said, touching the rose with her fingers, then picking it up and holding it beneath her nose.

"There are many flowers here," Severus replied stupidly, watching her sit up from bed and gaze down at the flower. Her hair streamed dark red over her shoulders and breasts, the light from the window behind her casting her head in a soft halo and warming her skin. Before he knew what he was about, he'd set the book down and gone to her. Still holding the rose in her hand she reached up and drew her arms around his neck, and he vowed right then and there that he would commit all three Unforgivables a thousand times over if he had to, for her.

She had cajoled him into donning Muggle garb so that they could walk the city, and as they did so, he began to wonder what their lives would have been like had they both been born without magic, if they'd been allowed to live out their lives away from the dangers now present in the wizarding world-if they'd been just average human beings, unendowed with magic's great and terrible power.

But no. What little he had learned of the Muggle world had told him that Muggles, too, had their share of evil and wretchedness. There was no escape from it, no matter who you were.

Nevertheless. That week in Paris was a much-needed balm to his senses, and to hers, too, it would seem. It was as though it had been ages since he'd seen her smile that way, and laugh, and be happy and carefree. Here, even among the French witches and wizards, they were nobody, unremarkable (save for her stunning beauty, which even in Paris turned heads); they could have been merely tourists, as far as anyone was concerned. At night, in their rooms, she was playful with him, naughty, wicked, and it wreaked havoc on his already unreasonable passion for her; he was filthy with her in a way he'd never been before, and afterward, ashamed of himself and sure she would hate him for it, she surprised him by laughing at him indulgently, and making favorable comments about his endowments that caused him to actually blush.

It could not last forever, though. Soon, they were back at Hogwarts, and the term began. Severus discovered immediately that he detested teaching as much as he'd expected: the obnoxiousness, the stupidity of the students grated on him, but he enjoyed the privilege of doling out detentions to and taking House points from the pupils who irked him the most, and he received a rare pleasure in punishing those who might have teased him while Severus himself had still been a student. After all, it'd been only a little over two years since he had graduated, and many if not most of the upperclassmen remembered him well, and were rather nonplussed about having to be taught by him. He was quite soon one of the most unpopular teachers at Hogwarts; only the Slytherins liked him, or at least found it expedient to act as though they did. Severus treated them less severely because of it, and in that way, being Head of Slytherin House was one of his less tiresome duties.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, all but Slytherin House loved Lily. The students, especially the youngest ones, flocked to her, for she spoke to them gently, soothed their pains both physical and emotional, and often tutored them in Potions or Charms. She was a warm, merry presence in the halls of Hogwarts, and one time Severus overheard in one of his Potions classes a Gryffindor fourth-year tell his partner that he couldn't believe Lady Lily was married to Professor Snape, how'd that greasy git ever snag a bird like her? Severus had the pleasure of taking ten points from Gryffindor for the student's cheek, though if the student had said anything insulting about _her_, Severus would have taken fifty points, and given him detention with Filch.

It was strange, though, sitting at the head table during mealtimes in the Hall, instead of among the students. As he cast his eyes over the House tables, he sighed grimly, glad he wasn't one of them anymore. As though reading his mind, Lily, who sat next to him, reached under the table and took his hand. He squeezed her fingers in return, and gazed down at her. Her rueful smile brought a similar one to his lips, and afterward, as they assembled out of the Hall, he could swear he heard one of the Gryffindor students say to another "Did you see that? Snape actually smiled! No, I'm not lying, he did!"

The nice thing was that Lily did not completely leave behind her playfulness in Paris; the sweetness of that week seemed to linger between them like the scent of one of her floral waters. One evening, as he was up late correcting the students' abysmal homework in his office, muttering to himself as he slashed parchment after parchment with blood-red ink and distributed zeroes liberally, she crept into the chamber, locked the door behind her.

"What are you doing awake?" he asked her, setting down his quill. "It's past midnight, you know."

"Couldn't sleep," she replied, wandering over to him and peering down at one of the parchments.

"Oh, Severus, he doesn't deserve a zero," Lily observed, shaking her head. "Why look, he got the description of aconite correct."

"But what he wrote about its uses is abysmal in the extreme, and deserves less than a zero, so it balances out," Severus replied, though mildly as she'd begun to run her fingers through his hair.

"That feel good?" she murmured as her hand smoothed down to his neck and began to massage there. He closed his eyes, nodded. More than good.

"Poor Sev," she said teasingly, leaning over and kissing his brow. "I know how little you wanted to teach."

"If only it could be you," he replied, pulling her close and pressing his face against her body. "You'd be so good at this. And the students love you, you know." He reached for her hand. "They're not the only ones," he whispered.

"Severus." She sat in his lap now, embraced him.

"Remus told me what you did for him," she said, running her fingers through Severus's hair. "Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"Because I wasn't sure at first if it would work," Severus replied, embarrassed at being caught out. "I hadn't made the potion before, you know."

"I think, Sev, if we weren't married, he'd propose to you," Lily smiled. "You should read the letter he sent me." Severus made a face of annoyance, and Lily laughed.

"But really," she said, growing serious again. "That was ever so thoughtful of you. You know, I've wanted you two to be friends."

"I'd hardly say we were that."

"Remus certainly seems to think so."

"Hmph."

"I've always been right about you, Slytherin," Lily whispered, kissing his cheek. "You truly are the best of them all."

Her warm weight in his lap, the feel of her lips and fingers on him lit a white flame of heat in Severus's being, and he smoothed the hem of her gown up her leg, then dipped his hand beneath it. But he gasped when he found that she had nothing on under her gown, and she giggled, said "I told you I couldn't sleep." He closed his eyes, dizzy with desire. Merlin's beard!

Afterward, he wondered if any Potions professor before him had ever experienced such things in that very room. Severus was somehow doubtful of it, though in truth, if anyone, including Severus himself, had been told that Severus would the recipient of such glory, they'd never have believed that, either.

* * *

><p>"Well, Severus. And when do you next meet with Lord Voldemort?"<p>

"I've already told you, I cannot predict when I will be summoned."

"Yes, of course. Nevertheless, I believe the next time you are, it would be expedient of you to offer some information, so as to strengthen Voldemort's trust in you."

"Indeed?" Severus asked, raising his eyebrows at Dumbledore. Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, nodded.

"Indeed. I believe it's time you told him about the Order-if he doesn't know of it already-and divulge to him when and where the next meeting shall take place."

Immediately Severus stood up, but Dumbledore smiled.

"Not to worry, Severus. I'd have placed enchantments which not even Lord Voldemort could penetrate. But it's crucial that you give him reason to trust you. If all works out, you should in time become closest to him, save for Bellatrix."

"Even over Lucius Malfoy?"

"Even so. I don't know if you apprehend what an asset you are to Voldemort; while Lucius is certainly loyal, he has not your intelligence, nor your powers. And power is what Voldemort covets most of all, even more than loyalty."

"You seem to understand Lord Voldemort well," Severus observed smoothly.

To Severus's surprise, Dumbledore's smile faltered a little.

"Oh, yes," Dumbledore murmured after a moment. "I have much reason to, you know." Severus waited, but Dumbledore did not elaborate.

"But tell me," Dumbledore said now a bit more cheerfully, "how does Lord Voldemort? Does he seem pleased with himself? Angry?"

Severus thought about it. "I'd say he seemed self-satisfied. Though," he added, "I'm quite sure that's his usual way, you know."

"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "But not angry?"

"No more than usual, I suspect." Severus pondered this. "In fact, if I had to put a description to it, I'd say he seemed rather triumphant."

"I see," Dumbledore said, nodding slowly. "That may be unfortunate. However, it also may mean he is growing overconfident. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before he makes a misstep."

Severus highly doubted this. Nevertheless, he said "Perhaps. Though we should not count on it."

"No, we shouldn't." Dumbledore stood up then, said "That'll do, Severus. Thank you."

Severus nodded, made for the door. But as he was about to leave the chamber, Dumbledore said behind him "It must be difficult for you, not being able to join Voldemort in earnest."

Severus slowly turned around, gazed steadily into Dumbledore's blue eyes.

"You're right," Severus said quietly. "And it is fortunate for you that I never can." And without waiting for a reply, Severus turned round again, and exited the door.

* * *

><p>Around a long, ebony table in Malfoy Manor sat the Dark Lord's select, with Voldemort himself at the head of it. Casually, Severus peered at the other Death Eaters, and received prim nods from Avery and Mulciber, who looked a bit surprised at Severus's presence. Bellatrix Lestrange, sitting to Lord Voldemort's right, narrowed her hooded dark eyes at Severus mistrustfully, before she laughed to herself as with some private joke at Severus's expense. But Narcissa next to her gave Severus a faint smile, and he inclined his head to her in response.<p>

"Well, then," the Dark Lord said, and the room fell silent as everyone turned to him. He raised his hand, and pointed a long, pale finger at Severus.

"I'm sure our newest member needs no introduction," the Dark Lord said lightly. "Most of you, I believe, know Severus Snape-if not personally, then at least you've most likely heard of him. He specializes in brewing potions that serve our purposes quite well. Don't you, Severus." Severus bowed to the Dark Lord in reply.

"Dumbledore's lap dog," Bellatrix tittered, her eyes glittering at Severus with a mad amusement. It was no stretch of the imagination to see the resemblance between her and Sirius Black.

"There, there, Bellatrix," the Dark Lord said indulgently. "Thanks to Severus's position at Hogwarts, he has news to tell us, or so he has informed me."

"I do," Severus said calmly. At once, all eyes turned to him. The Dark Lord beckoned him to continue.

"Some months ago," Severus said, "Dumbledore assembled a group of witches and wizards that he calls the Order of the Phoenix." A wry smile here. "Very clever of him, to name it after his pet bird."

"Indeed," Voldemort replied with a faint smile of his own. "Though Dumbledore has never been known for his modesty."

"Not at all. At any rate, this Order, you must know, has vowed to fight against you, My Lord, and-"

"That's not news," Bellatrix sneered. "Poor widdle Sev-Sev, thinking he had something to say that the grownups don't already know."

Severus studied Bellatrix coldly for a moment, before saying "How very like your cousin Sirius you are, Lestrange." At once Bellatrix's wicked grin turned into a scowl, and Severus smiled primly. "As it so happens," he went on, "I, as being ostensibly a member of said Order, know when and where their next meeting shall take place." Severus, ignoring Bellatrix's sniff, clicked his eyes to Voldemort, who nodded to him. "It shall be at the home of James Potter in Godric's Hollow, Halloween night."

"Are you certain of this, Severus?" Voldemort asked softly.

"I am," Severus replied.

"Well then," Voldemort said, looking around at the others. "I assume you all know what to do."

"How do you know he's telling the truth?" Bellatrix asked, pointing a black-nailed finger at Severus in accusation. "How are you sure we can trust Dumbledore's stooge, this Mudblood lover with his filthy little Mudblood wifey-poo?"

"Enough, Bellatrix," Voldemort said, though not unaffably. "Surely, you do not question my ability to tell friend from foe?"

She didn't reply, but she continued to scowl at Severus across the table. It was as though there was something within Severus that the Black family constitutionally loathed, with the exception perhaps of Narcissa.

The plan to annihilate the Order was made; Lucius and Bellatrix did most of the talking, though the Dark Lord broke in from time to time to approve of or negate a tactic or strategy. Severus himself offered up a few helpful details, though as he did so, he grew terribly uneasy at how close he was cutting things. One mistake on Dumbledore's part, and the Order would be finished. He privately vowed to ensure that Lily would be far away from Godric's Hollow on Halloween night.

Afterward, he returned to the castle, and reported to Dumbledore the details of his meeting with Voldemort, though he also stressed the importance that Dumbledore did not fail to ensure all protective enchantments were in place.

"And I'll have you know, right now, that Lily will not be attending that meeting," Severus stated clearly.

"Is she aware of that?" Dumbledore asked, raising his pale eyebrows over his spectacles.

"I'll arrange it so that she is called away at the last moment."

"Because a direct order from you not to attend would have the opposite effect," Dumbledore said, obviously remembering the evening he'd been to their home for supper. Severus didn't reply.

"And yet, knowing she will most likely be safe, you are still keen to ensure that the Order remains protected. Could it be that you have grown to care for your fellows, then, Severus?"

Severus snorted at that, but Dumbledore smiled faintly, said "Indeed, I can't imagine you'd be sorry to see anything happen to either James Potter or Sirius Black. What of the others, though?"

"As a member of the Order myself, it is my duty to protect it," Severus replied mechanically.

"Of course," Dumbledore nodded. "And with the information you've given me as to Voldemort's plan of attack, you may rest assured that you have done your duty faultlessly, while at the same time ensuring that Voldemort's trust in you grows ever stronger by telling him where and when the Order is to assemble in the first place. But you see, we may perhaps have the opportunity of apprehending some of Voldemort's most powerful Death Eaters, thanks to you." Dumbledore closed his eyes, as if thinking hard.

"Do you believe he suspects anything?" Dumbledore asked after a moment, keeping his eyes closed.

"I do not," Severus replied firmly. "I gave him exactly the information he thought was important, and no more."

"You are certain of this."

"How can you ask me, since it was you who taught me Occlumency."

"I must be sure, Severus." Dumbledore opened his eyes now, studied Severus's face. Severus could tell that Dumbledore was trying to invade his mind, but he would not allow it.

"Good," Dumbledore nodded, seeming to perceive his inability to access Severus's thoughts. "Nevertheless, I have to wonder if Voldemort had tested your loyalty in other ways."

Severus stiffened before he could prevent himself; Dumbledore evidently noticed, for he pressed his lips together, said "I see. And no doubt it wasn't pleasant, since my mentioning it distracted you enough to give yourself away." Severus had never told Dumbledore about Crucio'ing the Golightly witch; he couldn't bring himself to, when it came to it.

"Undoubtedly it is something you don't wish to discuss," Dumbledore went on, though in a surprisingly gentle tone. "I only hope that, whatever he had you do, your soul remains intact."

"It was not the Avada Kedavra curse," Severus said quietly, knowing this was what Dumbledore meant.

"I'm glad," the headmaster replied, lowering his head. Severus waited. At last, Dumbledore lifted his head again, stared out his window into the blackness of the night sky.

"Felix Felicis," the headmaster said unexpectedly. Severus felt himself beginning to seize up again, but forced himself to remain still.

"What about it, Headmaster?" Severus enquired with outward calm.

"You realize, of course, that the potion can sometimes nudge the course of events in a direction they were not likely to take otherwise," Dumbledore said.

"What does that have to do with anything," Severus asked coldly. But then, he remembered that, while Dumbledore was teaching him Occlumency, he'd glimpsed that particular memory in Severus's mind.

"I only mean, Severus, that some things are inevitable, no matter what path we choose."

"Do you mean fate?" Severus asked, suddenly angry. "Surely you don't believe that within some great Book it is written the course of our lives."

"No. Rather, there is magic in the world that is far older, and greater, than the workings of man, or even indeed of the earth. Such magic leaves echoes, and as we move forward-and yes, backward-in time, we pass through these echoes, and they can reverberate in such a way that...Well." Dumbledore smiled now, but it seemed a tired smile. "You've had a long night, Severus. Go to your rest." He sighed, then added almost to himself "You'll need it, soon enough."

Once Severus left the Headmaster's chambers, he wearily ascended the stairs of Ravenclaw Tower, then entered his and Lily's rooms at last.

As he quietly crept into their bedroom, he saw that she was asleep, her dear face peaceful in the light of the autumn moon coming in through the window. For a moment he just stood there staring at her, so full of love for her he could hardly breathe. He wondered if she could possibly have any idea the magnitude of his feelings for her; he doubted it, for it was beyond his power to ever express it, either in words or even actions. The only way she could ever understand would be if he were to physically tear his beating heart from his chest and hand it to her, for only then could she see that every inch of it was inscribed with her name.

At last, he disrobed, and slowly slipped beneath the covers, then gathered her warm body to him. In her sleep she sighed and drew her arm round his neck. "Sev," she murmured against his shoulder, her voice like a little girl's, so soft, so trusting. He held her close, buried his face in her hair.

"I'd die for you," he whispered into her hair, brave to speak his heart while she was not conscious. "I'd sell my soul for you. Always believe, everything I've ever done, I've done for you. I just hope that someday you can forgive me."

He felt her eyelashes blink against his skin, and he froze.

"Forgive you for what?" she asked in a sleepy voice.

"I...I didn't know you were awake," he replied, confused. "I only meant...because I'm such a fool-"

"Hush," she said, smiling against him, then kissing his shoulder. "I have something to say, too." And quietly, she told him she'd been to Madam Pomfrey that afternoon, who had informed her that she was pregnant with his child.


	8. The Scarecrow

This is the last chapter of the series. Sorry it took so long for me to update. It wasn't easy to write. In fact it was harder than HELL to write. Anyway, I thought I'd better post it today, on the 30th anniversary of when Lily died, since well. Cheers.

PS: I'd like to thank everyone for reading and commenting.

* * *

><p>PART VIII: THE SCARECROW<p>

October drew on, drear and grey like ashes in a hearth. Not a day had passed this month that contained the barest hint of blue sky. It was as though even the weather knew that these were grim days indeed.

This day was no different. Before Severus had descended into the dungeons that morning, they sky outside the window was a sheet of iron; and as he rose from the dungeons that afternoon, the same dull aspect greeted him. And yet, as Severus made his way up Ravenclaw Tower to his and Lily's quarters, the dying sun seemed to muster enough energy to burst through the clouds at last; and through a window nearby, the soft glow of the October sunset warmly lit a tableau that made Severus pause and catch his breath.

It was her, dressed in pale robes, sitting on a landing of the staircase, her hair down and shimmering like the russet floor of an autumnal forest. Next to her sat a young boy, surely no older than a first-year, his dark head against her shoulder, gazing up at her as she murmured something to him in a gentle voice. Not such an extraordinary thing, after all: Severus had grown used to the way the very youngest students went to her as though she were a second mother. What _was_ unusual was that the boy was a Slytherin; young Elias Brooke, in fact, whom Severus recalled was quite inept at Potions. Clearly, the boy had never received the message from his cohorts that Slytherins were not to fraternize with the Mudblood wife of their Head of House. And yet, the way the rather plain little lad gazed up at Lily with shining, almost pleading dark eyes was painful for Severus to witness, for he knew it was the exact same expression that he himself wore when he gazed at her: the same expression he'd worn, he was certain, since the first day he'd laid eyes on her in the park all those years ago.

But it was the way she returned the look-her kind smile, her eyes so soft and warm and full of affection for the homely little boy who probably had never been looked at like that before in his life-it was _that_ which made Severus's soul ache. For, more than her beauty, more than her intelligence and cleverness and what have you-more than anything else, it was her great, gentle heart that made him love her, would make him continue to love her even beyond the grave.

At length, she said something to the lad and he nodded, stood up. She stood up too, and took his hand. Severus couldn't help but smile a little at the way the boy tried to muster a manly aspect as he returned her handshake, but Severus waited until their adieu was concluded before he left the shadows and swept up the stairs with his customary frown.

"Brooke," Severus said severely as he peered down at the startled boy. "I wonder what a Slytherin student is doing in Ravenclaw Tower. Shouldn't you be in the library studying for your Potions exam on Monday?"

"Yessir," Brooke replied, nodding his head and then fleeing down the stairs, his dark robes billowing out from his short churning legs.

"Oh, Severus," Lily said, taking his arm as he led them up the stairs to their rooms. "Elias and I were just having a little chat, that's all."

"His time would be better spent studying his Potions homework. His marks are abysmal," Severus observed.

"Well, that's the only way he's _not_ like you, then."

"Oh?" Severus asked, offended by the comparison.

"Don't use that tone with me. In fact I find him quite charming and wonderful-very like another charming and wonderful boy I'd known when I was a little girl."

"If you mean Potter-"

"No, you bloody arse, of course not! I mean _you_."

"I hardly recall ever being described as either 'charming' or 'wonderful'."

"You were to me, though."

"My dear, your taste does border on the questionable sometimes. At any rate, why was he of all people talking to you? I was under the impression that the students in my House did not permit each other to speak to Muggleborns."

"But the Head of House himself may, of course."

"Of course."

"Well. As far as why he was talking to me: he was lonely, Severus."

Severus's foot almost paused on the stair, but then he cleared his throat, said with some reluctance "I suppose he is rather neglected by the other students."

"Severus!" Lily stopped, turned to him with a frown. "If he is, you should reach out to him!"

"What! Me?"

"Yes! You're his Head of House! And you-you know what it's like, to have no friends!" When she saw him start to scowl she added hastily "I'm sorry to bring up such things, but if anyone could understand him, it would be you!"

"It appeared to me that you understood him quite well," Severus replied, affronted.

"I'm a Gryffindor though, and a Muggleborn," she replied. "You know that the other Slytherin children would most likely scorn him for being friends with me. In fact, it's why we were up here, Severus-he came looking for me in secret so that his House mates wouldn't tease him."

Severus sighed as he looked down at his wife's pleading expression.

"I'll see what I can do," Severus said grudgingly. Instantly her smile returned, and she raised herself up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Only for her would he interest himself in a child's affairs. Then again, he would, and soon, have one of his own to concern himself with. The idea of it still stunned him.

When they got to their rooms at last, Severus bid her to sit down while he lit the fire and some candles, though she shot back tartly she was pregnant, not handicapped, thanks. Severus said evenly that he didn't see why she was complaining about his doing everything now when she used to complain before that he didn't do enough. This drew a smile on her face, and she said as she smoothed her hands over her still rather flat belly "You know what? I hope if it's a boy he's just like you."

"Ugh," Severus sneered, resorting to schoolboy slang as he straightened up some books on the table. "No, thank you. Surely you wouldn't wish such a horrible fate on your own offspring. Let it be a girl, and may she resemble _you_."

"Why not a boy though? What if we had a little boy like Elias?"

"Then I'd have to feed him to the Giant Squid."

"Sev! You're terrible. Anyhow, you'll see: whatever we have, you'll love him or her to pieces."

Severus muttered something noncommittal as he pretended to open up one of the books and stare down at it. Perhaps the only thing worse than having a boy like Severus would be having a _girl_ like Severus, the poor, pitiful thing. Still, somehow, Severus felt quite sure even a girl like that would hold some charm for him. A boy though? Severus didn't much like boys, he realized. Then again, he didn't much like anyone, except Lily.

She sighed now, and it was a familiar enough sigh by this time that he knew what was coming. "I only wish we could raise him-or her-at the Apothecary, Severus," she said wistfully.

"It's safer here at the castle," he replied as he always did.

"I know that. But...the Apothecary's home. _Our_ home. I miss it ever so much, don't you?"

"I...do," Severus admitted, gazing down at the book in his hands. It was _The__ Tales__ of__ Beedle __the__ Bard_, he noticed. She must have brought it out of storage. Right then, he could imagine her paging through it, thinking ahead to when she could read it to their daughter...or son.

"I know," Lily said, coming up to him from behind and drawing her arms round his waist. When he felt her lean her head against his shoulder, he closed his eyes.

"I just wish we could visit it sometimes," Lily murmured against his shoulder.

"You know we can't do that, love."

"You mean, _I_ can't." He could hear the ruefulness in her voice. "But Severus," she said next, her tone brightening, "if we went together-"

"Lily, no," he replied, though he tried to say it gently. He turned round in her arms, planted a kiss on her forehead. "It's dangerous for Muggleborns to be abroad. You know this."

"But what if we used a secret passage?"

"What!"

"Peter Pettigrew told me about it!" Now her eyes shone with excitement. "There's a way to get into Hogsmeade from the castle, and no one knows about it except Peter and Remus and...well, the other Marauders."

For once, Severus passed over a reference to his enemies in order to demand "Lily, please swear to me you haven't used that secret passage before!"

"Well," she replied, casting her eyes down. "I might have tried it, once."

"Damn it!" He slammed the book down onto the table, and she flinched. "What good is it for me to take this Hogwarts professorship in order to protect you, when you voluntarily go out and put yourself in danger in any case! And damn that rat-faced wretch for telling you about that passage!"

"It's quite safe, Severus," Lily replied petulantly, and he guessed she was annoyed that he was treating her like a child. But, Merlin knew, she sometimes behaved like one! "The passage leads to the basement of Honeydukes, and it was as safe as rain. All you have to do is go to the one-eyed witch in the third floor corridor and tap your want against it and say 'Dissendium'. We could both-"

"_No_. And you will not do it again, Lily, or I'll-"

"Or you'll what? What'll you do, Sev? Spank me?"

"I might!"

"Oooh!" Lily cackled wickedly, hopping away from him a few steps. Her face was lit with mischievous delight, and he felt himself blush.

"Sev! I embarrassed you! Oh, this is too good!" She was giggling now, pressing her hands against her mouth like a naughty girl indeed.

"You're the worst," he replied, feinting a dignified tone. "And don't try to change the subject by distracting me with...that."

"But you like the idea, don't you?" She was moving toward him again, a faint smirk on her face.

"No, I do not."

"Liar!"

"Even so, you can hardly expect me to do something like that in your condition."

"Oh for heaven's sake." But she dimpled at him, and he sighed, trying to remove from his mind the vision her insinuations had prompted. Merlin help him, he was lecherous enough as it was...

It was as though she read his mind however, for she was now standing before him, with _that_ look in her eyes that he was utterly helpless against. He had no idea if it was normal for pregnant women to behave this way, but it seemed to him that when she wasn't sick to her stomach, she was almost insatiable when it came to _those_ things. Not that he minded at all...oh, he did not! It was just that he was terrified of hurting the little fragile being that she was carrying, though she would grow impatient with him and tell him that Molly and Arthur Weasley did it up till Molly was eight months pregnant with Bill (Merlin's beard, Severus did not need to know that information about the Weasleys!) and that shut Severus up about it for a while. At any rate, they were nearly late going down to the Great Hall for supper, though when they did, Severus felt as if all eyes were on him and Lily, as if everyone could tell what they'd just been doing; certainly, Lily glowed and smiled in a way that was like a Muggle neon sign, and it only discomfited Severus further when Dumbledore caught his eye and had the temerity to actually wink at Severus!

They had not told anyone yet about the child, save for Madam Pomfrey, since Lily wanted to wait until she was three months along. Nevertheless, it seemed as though everyone somehow found out anyway, at least judging by the smiles the other professors bestowed on Lily, and even on Severus. Severus hardly wished for their goodwill any more now than he'd had in the past, so their solicitous courtesy to him was annoying in the extreme. He could only imagine how much worse it would be once the child was actually born. He, too, wished they could be back at the Apothecary, where he could hole up in his work room and let Lily alone receive all the smiles anyone cared to bestow.

After supper, Severus went to the Slytherin dungeons to address any issues his students had, reprimand those guilty of infractions, assure the Slytherin Quidditch captain he'd reserve the Quidditch pitch for practice next Saturday, then finally, he climbed up Ravenclaw Tower for the evening. He did have his students' homework to correct, but he put it aside for now, since he wanted nothing but the gentle company of his wife to fortify him against what he must endure tomorrow. But even the comforting sensation of her warm, sleeping form beside him could not prevent him from lying awake afterward with his thoughts, the thoughts he so diligently prevented himself from having around her. The fact was though that tomorrow was Halloween, and soon Dumbledore's plans would be put to the test. But how Severus was to act like he was helping the Death Eaters while at the same time really aiding the Order, he was sure he had no idea. The only thing he could feel comfortable about was that Lily would not be there.

He tried to think of more pleasant things to help him fall asleep, but of course it was difficult to do so these days. Even Lily herself was no longer an unalloyed source of joy for him, though she did not know it. The fact was that her recent burden had intensified his fear for her safety a thousandfold, and like tonight, he could not sleep for thinking over and over again what he could to protect her, to protect _them_. It seemed as though there was never enough he could do, that there would always be something he would fail to take into consideration in all his careful, obsessive plans to keep her, _them_ safe. Or somehow she, herself, might escape his vigilance and in her headstrong, Gryffindor way run off to be heroic in some ill-advised misadventure, like exploring that damnable secret passageway.

At least she had sense enough to see the logic of not attending Order meetings until the child was born, Severus thought grimly. But once she had given birth, what would prevent her from engaging in risky endeavors? Maybe he could use the child's welfare as an argument: how on earth was he or she to carry on without a mother? He only hoped that once the child was born, Lily would become so smitten with it that she'd eschew all her duties in the Order. He knew he was being optimistic, though.

When he was still wide awake after about an hour, he gingerly slid out of bed and groped in the dark for his robes. "Sev?" he heard Lily whisper in the dark. He went to her side, kissed her brow. "Can't sleep," he responded to her quietly. "Going to take a walk through the castle."

"Do you need company?"

"Not at all," he replied, smiling to himself in the dark. It was, perhaps, the only time he'd allow himself to smile fully, when no one could see him, not even her. "Get your rest, Lily. I'll be back soon."

At first he was tempted to find the secret passageway that Lily had told him about, but he decided what he really needed was someone who could ease his fears about tomorrow night. Only one person could do that, and Severus was quite sure that he would still be awake. Indeed, Severus wondered if the Headmaster ever slept.

Rolling his eyes as he mumbled the password "Saltwater Taffy," Severus after a moment ascended the staircase that the gargoyle revealed to him. When he knocked on the door of the Headmaster's office, though, a voice immediately said "Enter," and when Severus did so, he found Dumbledore smiling up at him from his desk, Fawkes behind him worrying a cuttlebone with soft clicking sounds.

"Ah! Well. A welcome surprise," Dumbledore said cheerfully, gesturing to the seat across from him.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Headmaster," Severus replied, taking the seat.

"Oh, no. In fact, your visit is rather well timed. I'm afraid I've been doing a bit of brooding tonight, and nothing can chase away the 'blues', as they say, better than pleasant company."

"I doubt many would agree with your assessment about the 'pleasantness' of my company, Headmaster."

"Only because you choose to bestow it on so very few people."

Severus sniffed, but didn't reply to this. Instead he said "And what troubles you, Sir?"

"Oh, I imagine the same thing that drew you from your comfortable quarters to my office."

"I see."

"Yes, I believe you do."

Severus pondered for a moment, then said "In that case, I shall get to the point. Regarding tomorrow night, I have difficulty perceiving clearly how I should proceed. On the one hand, I must make it look to the Death Eaters as though I were assisting them. On the other hand, I must in actuality help protect the Order. I'm uncertain as to how I am to do both at once."

"Nothing so easy: merely proceed as you always do, Severus."

"And exactly what is meant by that?" Severus snapped impatiently.

"How should I know? You're the one who manages it. And quite well, I might add," Dumbledore said, a twinkle in his eyes.

Severus repressed a sigh. This was hardly the reassurance he'd come for. Though perhaps he shouldn't be surprised that Dumbledore would only tease him with mysteries and caprice. He tried a different tactic. "And you've informed the rest of the Order that they are to be prepared for an attack on Godric's Hollow?"

"Yes, they are all aware."

"All right." Severus closed his eyes, thought hard. His head ached with the effort of it.

"Severus," Dumbledore said now. His tone was so gentle that it made Severus open his eyes and look at him.

"Perhaps it would do better for you to stay away after all," Dumbledore said. "No, I don't mean to imply that you're a coward-never that! Rather, your presence may put a great strain on your credibility with Voldemort if it came to the point, and you cannot afford to lose your status with him."

"I can't stay away," Severus muttered now. "The Dark Lord ordered me to be in Godric's Hollow with the rest of you."

"I see," Dumbledore said, gazing directly into Severus's eyes. _No, __old __man,__ I'm__ not__ hiding__ anything __from__ you_, Severus thought bitterly. _And __even __if I was__,__ I'm__ too __skilled__ an__ Occlumens __now __for __you __to__ ever __find __it_. Severus returned Dumbledore's gaze with equal intensity, and at length Dumbledore smiled again, said more pleasantly "Well! That's solved then, isn't it?"

"Not quite," Severus replied, scorning to sheathe his disdain. "Those fools are aware, I hope, that they are to refrain from behaving as though they are expecting an attack?"

"Severus, let me remind you that you are not the only seasoned soldier of this war."

"If I'd had it my way, I wouldn't be a soldier at all."

"No. If you'd had it your way, you'd have been a soldier, but for the other side."

Dumbledore stood up then, smiled at Severus. "I believe I shall turn in now, Severus. May sleep find you too, this night."

* * *

><p>"Now, don't go anywhere while I'm gone."<p>

"And where would I go?"

"Do _not_ leave the castle, Lily. Enjoy yourself at the feast. Play with the children."

"Oh, Severus," Lily smiled, tucking his scarf tightly into his cloak for him. "I'll be quite all right."

"You'd better be."

"I will!"

"Hm."

"But Sev?" Her smile faded as she gazed up at him, and he took her small warm hands in his. "You'll be careful, won't you? If anything happened to you-"

"Hush," he said, bending down to kiss her brow. She embraced him tightly then, and he held her close, buried his face into her fragrant hair.

"There was something else Peter told me," she murmured now against his shoulder. "Besides the passage, I mean."

"What," Severus said with slight annoyance. What other harmful thing could that wretch have let drop now?

"He said that you-he said that you were in league with You Know Who."

Severus pulled away from her and looked down into her face. "As I am still alive, I believe we can safely say he's mistaken," he said dryly.

"But he said you were seen going into Malfoy Manor," she whispered. "And he said Death Eaters speak of you as being one of them."

Severus rolled up his sleeve, showed her his bare arm. "I see no Dark Mark, do you?" he asked. "In any case, how would Pettigrew of all people have such intelligence, unless he were a Death Eater himself?"

"Severus, can you deny that you've been to Malfoy Manor? Can you deny that you've spoken with You Know Who?"

"What do you think, Lily?" he asked quietly. He reached his hand up to stroke her cheek with his thumb. She closed her eyes, leaned into the touch.

"I think...I think if you did, you had good reason," she said breathlessly. "I think if you did, it was because-it was because you are doing it under Dumbledore's orders, as his spy." She opened her eyes now, looked right into his. "I know you could never lie to me about that. Just..." She pressed her fingers to her lips, repressed a sob. "Just be careful, all right?"

"Ahhh," he said painfully, drawing her tightly into his arms.

"I love you more than my own life," he whispered into her hair. "I've loved you from the moment I first saw you. And I will love you even when we both are gone."

He heard her sigh against his chest, and he closed his eyes as he tried to imprint this moment into her mind, so that if anything should happen to him she would forever remember that she was the dearest thing in the world to him, and always had been.

There was no blue sky that afternoon, of course, no sun to cast the land below into a cheerful gold; instead, the sun petulantly hung behind a barrier of cloud, so that the fields were a dull dun, the color of mud-the color of his mood right then, actually.

He could have easily Apparated from Hogwart's gate to Godric's Hollow. But while he disliked flying-he never was much on a broomstick-he preferred to have time to mull over his plan away from Lily's presence.

Despite the pride he felt in being chosen by the Dark Lord personally to be a double agent to Dumbledore-and Severus did feel pride, he _did_-the other things he was required to do, such as Crucio'ing that witch, disturbed him, even as another part of him reveled in it, the way he'd heard some men revel in rape. However, though he tried to hide his emotions from Lily, not even Occlumency could keep her from penetrating his feelings at least, if not his thoughts. She had an uncanny way of knowing how he did, even more than Dumbledore or Voldemort. When she asked him what was wrong though, he only said "My work in the Order." It was true enough, as far as it went. When he would say that, she would demur from asking him any more questions. She knew his duties were of the most top-secret kind, as explained to her by Dumbledore himself. And clearly, judging by her last words to him, she'd suspected far more than she'd let on.

As he gazed down at the land once more, he saw a lone, picked-over figure in the center of an empty, harvested field. Though practically a relic in the Muggle world, they were still used by witches and wizards to keep crows away from the crops. However, while wizarding scarecrows were effective, Muggle ones were not, more of a ritualistic object than anything. Since the mangly, pitiful thing below didn't move save for the shreds of its black clothing fluttering from an itinerant wind, Severus knew it was not enchanted. Or, maybe it had been at one time, but the enchantment had faded, the scarecrow long abandoned by whomever had owned it. Distant though it was, the thing's empty coal eyes seemed to peer up at Severus from its faded, burlap face. Severus shuddered as if from a sudden chill, flew on.

By the time he reached Godric's Hollow, it was dark. He landed before the small gate of Potter's abode, and passed through it as easily as he did through Malfoy Manor's. There were times when even Severus occasionally forgot whom he really worked for. But the fact that he was still alive told him he'd yet broken his vow to Lily, even inadvertently. Even subconsciously.

Severus had timed it so that he was one of the last to arrive; he knew neither he nor Potter would care to be in each other's company without others around. After he knocked on the door, he studied Potter's home with a critical eye as he waited to be let in. Oddly, it was less flashy and pretentious than he'd expected.

"All right, Snape?"

Severus felt his mouth fill with acid even as he turned to see the smug, bespectacled face of James Potter at the door. After all these years, Severus's hatred of the man still made his fingers clench into talons.

"Are you ill, Potter?" Severus asked icily. "For I can hardly imagine what else would prevent you from using your usual epithet towards me."

"Snivellus, you mean?" asked Black as he sidled up to Potter with a grin. "What's the matter, Snivelly? You miss your old name?"

"I thought we weren't to do that anymore," Potter frowned at Black.

"Bother these blasted 'rules', Prongs. Fighting You Know Who is such a bore, why can't I have a little fun with old Snivellus here in the meantime?" Black's smile widened. "Especially since he's You Know Who's secret agent."

Severus tried to prevent an expression of surprise from appearing on his face, but evidently not in time, for Black laughed, said "See, James? What did Wormtail tell us? He knew Snivelly was the one who told Dumbledore about the planned attack on us. It's because he's really working for-"

"If that were the case, then why would I reveal this plan to Dumbledore?" Severus sneered.

"Because you've given Dumbledore wrong information, and-well, that's what you did."

"I don't believe that," Potter said quietly. Both Severus and Black looked at him.

"What do you mean? You remember how at Hogwarts he was just itching to join You Know Who!" Black cried out.

"Yes, but that was before-Well. But now?" Potter raised his eyes, stared directly into Severus's own. There wasn't a trace of a smile on his face, not a trace of humor. "He wouldn't do anything to put her in danger," Potter said to Black, but he kept his eyes on Severus. "Would you, Snape?" he added, almost a whisper.

_Never_, Severus found himself trying to say. However, no sound came out; his mouth only formed the word.

"Well, Prongs, Padfoot," came a familiar, friendly voice. Then, "I say, Severus, won't you come in?" And Severus looked up to see Remus Lupin smiling faintly at him. "Getting along, are we?" Lupin added as he cut his glance to his two friends while Severus entered the house. Black mumbled something to himself and slouched away, but Potter glanced at Severus once more and nodded at him briefly before he too moved off.

"What was that?" Severus asked, too astonished to attempt formality with the werewolf.

"Oh, you mean James? Well, you see, he may have had a small change of heart when he heard what you've done for me. But just a very small change of heart, understand. It also didn't hurt that I threatened to disembowel him during the next full moon if he didn't behave himself." Lupin smiled. "But Sirius I'm afraid doesn't care about my threats." Lupin's smile faded. "I want to thank you again, Severus, for what you've done for me. It has made all the difference in the world. You don't know what I-I mean-"

Dismissing this, Severus hastily asked "And just how many people think I'm the Dark Lord's secret agent?"

"Oh, was Sirius on about that to you? Well, he and Peter are the only ones," Lupin replied. "Peter somehow got it into his head that you're betraying us. But needless to say, I-and James, you know-don't believe that."

Severus remembered something. "Lily told me about a secret passage in Hogwarts-a separate one from that which leads from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack," Severus added when Lupin raised his eyebrows.

"Which one would that be?" Lupin asked, faintly surprised.

"The one near the one-eyed witch."

The werewolf frowned. "Who told you about that one?"

"Lily did. But she learned about it from Pettigrew."

"She did? That's strange. I wonder why he told her. James and Sirius swore us to secrecy about it."

"Where is Pettigrew, anyway," Severus asked, looking around the room. Only now did he seem to notice the little man was missing. In fact, he and Dumbledore were the only two who weren't there yet, but Dumbledore would arrive after he finished presiding over the Hogwarts Halloween feast, Severus knew.

"Don't know," Lupin shrugged. "I thought Peter was going to be here."

And suddenly, Severus knew. There was a traitor in the Order, all right. But it wasn't Severus himself.

"Lupin, we must-" Severus began hurriedly, but it was too late: all at once, everything erupted in chaos around them. The protective charms Dumbledore had set on the house had evidently been broken somehow, for amid clouds of swirling black smoke Severus espied the telltale gleam of Death Eater masks, and here and there green bolts of certain death were ignited to the cries and shouts of utter pandemonium. Soon, though, the Order rallied itself and fought back. Unable to either outwardly battle against the Death Eaters or defend his fellow Order members, Severus hovered beneath the stairs murmuring wandless countercurses to shield his compatriots. Though when he caught a Death Eater's eye-Severus recognized Lucius Malfoy by the design of the mask-the Death Eater nodded to him briefly before sending a bolt of green light past Severus to a target behind him. The bolt passed so close to Severus he felt a lock of his hair hiss and crackle. Severus turned to see what the Death Eater's victim was, just in time to watch James Potter crumple to the floor.

"No!" Severus heard a voice shout, and soon, Sirius Black was running toward the prone body.

"You fool!" Severus hissed, apprehending Black and dragging him down onto the floor. "Do you want to get killed, too?"

"I saw him! I saw that Death Eater nod to you!" Black screamed, his face monstrous even as tears streamed down his cheeks. "Peter was right! You're one of them!"

"You blasted idiot!" Severus snarled, shaking Black by the shoulders. "Will you get a hold of yourself!"

At once, though, the pandemonium stopped abruptly, and the Death Eaters seemed to vanish; and a moment later, Dumbledore's robes swept the ground before Severus and Black.

"Ah," Dumbledore said quietly as he gazed down at James Potter's unmoving face. He crouched beside James, felt his neck for a minute, then gently removed James' spectacles, and closed his eyes with his fingers.

"It would seem we have a traitor in our midst," Dumbledore said to Severus and Black as he stood up again. "That would be the only way the Death Eaters could have undone the enchantments I'd put on this house."

"I have your traitor here!" Black yelled, grasping Severus by the collar. "This nasty, stinking, hateful, greasy monster! I saw the Death Eater nod at him! And Peter-"

"Severus is no traitor," Dumbledore replied, his voice mild but firm. "So please let him go, Sirius."

"But the Death Eater-"

"I didn't want to make it generally known, but Severus is my spy against Voldemort. So now you know." When Sirius made to speak, Dumbledore raised his hand, said "Have you asked yourself why Peter is not with us tonight, Sirius?"

But right then, the others gathered around them, and as Severus and Black stood up, Severus got to watch Lupin collapse upon James's body, tears in his eyes. When Sirius joined him, Severus turned away from this Marauder mourning party, and waited for Dumbledore to finish speaking with Frank Longbottom before he took the headmaster aside and said "Lily. Was she at the feast tonight?"

"Yes, she was," Dumbledore replied wearily. "Looking a little pale, perhaps, but well. Worry not, Severus."

Severus allowed himself a moment to sigh with relief, before next saying "I, too, suspected Pettigrew," and he gave Dumbledore the reasons for his suspicions.

"I must agree with you, I'm afraid," Dumbledore said grimly as he looked over to James's corpse.

"You're not sorry, are you?" Dumbledore asked as he watched Severus turn his eyes to James too.

"I don't know how I feel," Severus said truthfully.

"But you do not rejoice."

"No. Not that."

Right then, Dumbledore called the remaining members to order, and after briefly explaining to them his suspicions about Pettigrew (over Sirius's protests), they quietly took care of James's body. Feeling that he was not exactly a welcome presence for one of James' chief mourners, Severus told Lupin that he would be on his way home now, but to contact him if he was needed.

"Never mind Sirius," the werewolf said as he walked Severus to the door. "He's raving right now, but soon, he'll see reason." Lupin tried for a smile, but it faltered, and he dug into his pocket for his handkerchief, held it to his eyes.

Other people's emotions made Severus extremely uncomfortable. So, after awkwardly patting the werewolf's shoulder, he made his escape with his broom, though instead of flying home this time, he Apparated back to Hogwarts gate, wishing to get to Lily as soon as he could. Once he entered the castle grounds he sent his broom ahead of him to let her know he was back, and as he walked across the grounds to the castle he drank in the cold night air in the hopes that it would help settle his churning mind. It would not do for Lily to suspect how horribly wrong everything had gone this night. At least, not yet. Certainly she would find out about it soon enough, but all Severus wanted right now was to hold her in his arms and let her sweet presence comfort his troubled soul.

As he walked, he peered to the left of him, to where the Forbidden Forest lay. Beneath the middling moon he could only see the tops of the trees dimly illuminated, but as always, the life of the forest seemed to call him, and he felt the center of his body tingle from the sweet, hot memory of that golden afternoon where everything began for him. He picked up his pace and hurried on, impatient to get to Lily as soon as he could.

It was late, the castle quiet, the students in their dorms, if not sleeping then at least not abroad. Severus's journey up Ravenclaw Tower was solitary, then, just as he preferred. Indeed, the whole entire world could perish and he would care not, as long as his Lily were spared.

When he entered their chambers at last, he saw that the fire was low on the grate, and no candles lit. Thinking she'd probably fallen asleep without banking the fire, he crept into their bedchamber, but at once the coldness of the room told him she wasn't there. "_Lumos_," he said to his wand, and the room sprang into light, but the bed was empty.

Immediately he searched the rest of their quarters, then went into the front room again. Only then did he see the letter on the table that he'd missed before. It was addressed to her from the Slytherin boy they'd hired to keep the Apothecary while they were at Hogwarts. _Please__come_, it said. _There__is__a__gentleman__here__who__is__sick__and__requests__your__help_.

He was out the door then, flying down the stairs; if he'd been bird, his pace could not have been quicker, or more deadly silent. He knew she'd taken the secret corridor, oh why hadn't he stayed here tonight! In a daze, in a haze, blind, he nearly ran into Dumbledore, who was making his way up Ravenclaw Tower at the same time, no doubt looking for him.

"Why, Severus!" Dumbledore whispered. "What on earth-"

"Lily," Severus rasped. "She's gone. I must-Lily. She-"

"Where?"

"The Apothecary. Please. I must-"

"Come along. I know the fastest way."

Severus was grateful that Dumbledore understood the gravity of the situation. But when the headmaster led him back up the stairs again Severus began to stutter in protest, to which Dumbledore said "A moment, Severus. Trust me."

Severus had no choice but to follow Dumbledore to the landing. Without a word, Dumbledore opened the window, and stepped out of it onto the ledge.

"Well? Come!" Dumbledore admonished Severus. Too beside himself to question, Severus did what he was told. Once he was on the ledge too, Dumbledore grasped his arm.

"You will soon perceive that being Headmaster has it advantages," Dumbledore told him wryly. And at once, to Severus's astonishment, they Apparated.

The Apothecary's windows were dark, save for a feeble glow in the upstairs parlor window. The front door was not forced; it was even locked. Hoping this was a good omen, Severus unlocked the front door and went in, Dumbledore following, their wands aglow. Behind the counter lay the Slytherin boy, unmoving. Dumbledore paused at the corpse but Severus went on, back into the work room, then up the stairs. The haze of nightmare fell over him; he'd been in this very scenario before. And a part of him wanted to halt his footsteps, for he already knew what he'd find up there. No one needed to tell him that his treachery had at last been discovered, and repaid in kind.

When he saw her lying on the floor almost exactly the way she had in his nightmare, a part of him suddenly felt relief. Of course! This was all a dream. He was just dreaming again, that's all. But he wasn't about to let his mind fool him this time. As he sank down onto the floor and pulled dream-Lily's corpse to him, he laughed into her hair, knowing that soon, real Lily would gently shake his shoulder, and say to him "Wake up, Sev, you're having another dream again." And she'd be warm and soft, not cold and rigid like the dream corpse he held in his arms. She'd smile at him reassuringly, not gaze at him with clouded eyes, a winter pond frozen over. Her hair though-her hair would smell the same as this one's, all of parchment, ink, flowers, and the riverbank back home, please hurry, love, please wake me up soon, I can't stand this anymore.

"Severus."

Severus looked up over the glossy red hair and saw the Headmaster standing at the top of the stairs, staring mournfully at what Severus held in his arms.

"I'm so sorry," Dumbledore whispered, slowly walking toward him. Severus flinched, and Dumbledore stopped.

Suddenly, a strange, low sound as of a baying cur came from somewhere, and it was a while before Severus realized it was coming from him. When Dumbledore took another step toward him, Severus hissed and grasped Lily close, snarled at the headmaster threateningly.

"I'm sorry," Dumbledore repeated, lowering his head. "I failed you, Severus. You, and her." He gazed at Lily's form for a moment, looked away again.

Severus closed his eyes and pressed his face into his dead wife's hair. "Please," he tried to say. He didn't know whom he pleaded to, or for what. But the word was lost in a sob.

"Severus."

After a long time, Severus looked up again, and through his tears he saw Dumbledore reach into the neck of his robes, and draw out a small object on a chain.

"Do you know what this is?" Dumbledore asked him, holding out what looked like a small golden hourglass. "I'm about to do something that is not permitted in the wizarding world. But I made a promise to you, Severus, and I failed. This is the one way I can make it up to you."

"What is it? Will it bring her back? Will it-"

"Oh, yes," Dumbledore said, looking very weary. "It will bring her back."

"Then do it. Do it!" Severus howled. "What are you waiting for? Do it now!"

"No matter at what personal cost to you?" Dumbledore asked him.

"No! Just do it. Bring her back, please, whatever it takes..."

"Very well," Dumbledore said. "But to ensure we don't break the laws of the universe, you will remember nothing of this life." The headmaster held the hourglass between index finger and thumb, then turned it upside down once, twice, three times, four, five times six times seven, eight...

* * *

><p>They'd both gotten O's in their Potions O.W.L.s, of course. Not many had, or even received an E. Fortunately, Potter and his mates, with the exception of Lupin, didn't manage it, evidently, since they failed to make it to N.E.W.T. level.<p>

Severus was glad of it, just so that he could have at least one class, anyway, where his tormentors were not present. Not that it helped him at all where _she_ was concerned. This year, they did not sit together, as they had in years past. Rather, she partnered up with Lupin, and Severus found himself with no partner at all, since there was an odd number of students in the class, and not even his Slytherin fellows preferred to sit with him.

It was the first time he'd seen her up close since last term. For two long months over the summer he'd only glimpsed her from afar as he hid in one of her neighbor's hedgerows and watched her walk to and from her house with her sister. She no longer met him at the riverbank, when in previous summers he might see her every day for a week straight. The pain of wounded pride was nothing in comparison to heartbreak's agony, a lesson he had learned the hard way.

When school commenced he'd of course seen her at Nine and three quarters, but she was chattering with Mary Macdonald and the other Gryffindors, her back pointedly to him. Across the Great Hall during the welcome feast her back was to him too, her long red hair like a stop sign. So Potions was the first time in what seemed like an age he'd been able to see her face clearly.

In a way, it would have been better if he'd not. To his disbelief, she'd grown even more beautiful over the summer, and more womanly too, her cheeks having lost their girlish roundness and instead taking on an almost feline shape so that his heart thrummed with bitter longing and his fingers itched to caress her face. But she looked at him not at all, merely folded her hands in front of her as Slughorn entered the classroom at last and smiled around at the students. If he had an opinion as to why Severus and Lily were not sitting together as they had in the past, he kept it to himself.

"Welcome, welcome!" Slughorn chirped in his jovial way. "Well, here we are then! Congratulations on reaching N.E.W.T.-level Potions! You have all passed your O.W.L.s with an Exceeds Expectations or better, and therefore are quite ready for advanced Potions work."

He turned to the table in front of the class, where stood three bubbling cauldrons and a tiny vial filled with a golden liquid.

"Before you are some of the most powerful potions ever invented. The first one is called Veritaserum. Who knows what it does?"

At once both Lily's and Severus's hands shot up. Severus glanced at her, and to his surprise, she glanced at him too, before quickly looking away.

Slughorn smiled. "Well, well, it's no surprise that you two should be the first to raise your hands. Miss Evans, then."

"Veritaserum is a powerful truth serum," Lily said promptly. "Even one drop can cause someone to reveal their deepest secrets."

"Splendid, splendid, very good! Five points to Gryffindor!" Slughorn nodded in approval. "Well then, who can tell me what this next one is? By adding a bit of someone's essence to this mixture-a hair, a fingernail-before drinking it, you can take on their form for up to an hour."

Once more, Lily and Severus both raised their hands.

"Mr. Snape," Slughorn said to Severus.

"Polyjuice Potion," Severus replied.

"Excellent. Five points to Slytherin. And now," Slughorn said, hovering over the third cauldron. "This one is called Amortentia. What does it do? Yes, Miss Evans?"

"It's the most powerful love potion in the world," Lily said, a faint tremor in her voice. Severus lowered his head so that his hair hid his face, for he did not trust what sort of expression he was wearing right then.

"Quite so, quite so, Miss Evans! Five points to Gryffindor. And what does it smell like?"

"It smells different for every person," she said. Severus peeked at her through the strands of his hair. "For instance," she went on, "to me, it smells like...parchment, ink, wood smoke, and...and the riverbank back home." Her eyes slowly slid to where Severus sat, and they held each other's gaze for a moment till she abruptly looked away.

Severus swallowed hard. That was what the potion smelled like to _him_, except instead of wood smoke it was a floral essence that he knew to be the scent of her hair. What could it mean that it smelled like the riverbank back home for her, too? Could it be...?

His heart knocked painfully in his chest as Slughorn went on "Amortentia smells different for each person, as Miss Evans has pointed out, reminding them of the things that they find most attractive." Severus repressed a sigh. "It doesn't create actual love, of course," Slughorn pointed out however. "That's impossible. But it does cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. For that reason, it is probably the most dangerous potion in this room."

Severus was grimly glad that Potter wasn't there, for no doubt he would have been tempted to steal some of it, and sneak it into Lily's pumpkin juice. Merlin knew Severus was sorely tempted to do so himself.

Slughorn's next words brought Severus to attention again, as the professor picked up the tiny bottle.

"This," he said, "is Felix Felicis. Who can tell me what it does? Yes, Mr. Snape?"

"It's liquid luck," Severus replied, lowering his hand. "For the one who drinks it, everything they attempt is assured success."

"Very good, Mr. Snape. Five points to Slytherin. But it must be used sparingly, as it causes giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence if taken in excess."

"Have you ever taken it, Professor?" Lupin asked.

"I have, Mr. Lupin. Twice. And both times resulted in a perfect day each. Now," he said, setting the tiny bottle into its holder again. "Today you will brew the Draught of the Living Death, and the person who makes the most perfect brew wins this bottle of Felix Felicis."

Suddenly, Severus was hungry to win it. For, he knew if he did, he could gain Lily's trust, her friendship again, without which his life was a poisoned well. He knew he could! Severus immediately cracked open his _Advanced__Potion-Making_ textbook and found the recipe for the Draught of the Living Death, gazed down at the preliminary notes he'd already made in the margins.

As the students got up to get ingredients from the supply cabinet, Severus felt someone jostle against him, and he turned to see Lily ducking her head while she murmured "Excuse me," her cheeks flushing pink.

"It's all right," Severus replied quietly, reaching for the asphodel at the same time she did. Their fingers brushed together, and immediately she snatched her hand away.

"Go ahead, you first," he said politely.

"No, go ahead," she said, turning her back on him.

He sighed, reached for the asphodel-he smiled bitterly to himself when he remembered asphodel belonged in the Lily family of plants-and measured out a portion before obtaining a handful of sopophorous beans and returning to his table.

Over the course of the hour he noticed Lily now and again peeking over at him as he made his potion, just as he peeked over at her. They both knew the other was their only real rival for the Felix Felicis potion, and he understood she was as determined to win it as he was.

He saw her crush her sopophorous beans with the flat side of her knife, and he immediately copied her, then made a note of it in his textbook when he saw how effective it was in extracting the juice from the beans. If only they were still partnered together! He knew they'd both win the prize! Yet, if she were still his partner, there wouldn't be any dire need for him to win the Felix Felicis either...

He stirred his potion clockwise every seven counterclockwise stirs, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her watching him, before she began copying his method. Why, they were both cribbing off each other! Lupin seemed oblivious to the civil war going on right across his nose, as the werewolf dumped his chopped beans into his cauldron, and frowned down at the result.

When Slughorn called time, he went around and inspected everyone's potions. Came back to Severus's. Then went back to Lily's.

"It's a close call," Slughorn said, and Severus's heart sank. Slughorn always favored Lily over him. Sure enough, Slughorn went on "But I do believe that Miss Evans' potion is a bit clearer than yours, Mr. Snape. Miss Evans wins the Felix Felicis."

However, as Slughorn held the golden vial out to Lily, the classroom door opened, and the Headmaster himself suddenly swept in.

"Hello, Horace," Dumbledore smiled cheerfully at Slughorn. "I'm very sorry to disturb your class, but I believe...Ah, yes," Dumbledore said, plucking the bottle of Felix Felicis from Slughorn's hand.

"I apologize, my dear," Dumbledore said pleasantly to a bewildered Lily. "But you see, I have urgent need for this very elixir. Surely you don't mind giving it up for a greater cause?"

Lily shook her head, obviously crestfallen, and Dumbledore nodded, said "Excellent! Thank you, Miss Evans."

Severus watched all this with a puzzled frown; something about this scenario seemed not quite right to him. Even more oddly, Dumbledore paused for a moment and looked directly into Severus's eyes, his own blue gaze sad somehow, and somehow, strangely regretful.

"Ah, well," Slughorn smiled after Dumbledore left the room. "You win some, lose some. I'm afraid I have no more to give you, my dear, as it takes six months to brew. However, instead I'll give Gryffindor House an extra fifty points for your potion."

It was hardly a satisfactory substitute, but all the same Severus was glad Lily didn't get the Felix Felicis, after all. For what was good luck for her would probably be bad luck for him, as the trajectories of their lives continued to rush away from each other's till, like sunrise and sunset, their destinies could never be as one.

-END


End file.
